John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Apogee London: Viking (1991), p.215.

The author goes on in colourful detail to describe how the Byzantine commanders led these troops to victory in the ensuing engagement, which lasted several days, and came to be known as that of Dorostolon. (I intend to write a story about it one day.)

Yet in the same volume that imparts us this high drama, we also have the following:

‘They found their mission far from easy. Theodora showed a good deal more spirit than Zoe had done, refusing absolutely to listen to the pleas of her father’s old friends and taking sanctuary in the convent chapel. But Cabasilas and his followers were equally determined. They pursued her to her place of refuge and after a furious struggle dragged her forcibly into the street. There she too was obliged to change her monastic habit for an imperial robe, after which she was borne in triumph to St Sophia where the Patriarch was waiting. And so it was that, late in the evening of Monday 19 April, the furious old lady received - with the greatest possible reluctance - the crown of Byzantium, while a vast concourse of people of every rank and from every class of society cheered her to the echo.’

Ibid., pp.298-9

The first of the above passages is very much a prelude to high-stakes action, written in a manner which cannot fail to get the reader’s blood up. The second, while of little less importance as an event, cannot help but be amusing at the very least; a reluctant (to say the least) elderly nun taken against her will and by main force to be crowned Empress of what was at the time still very much a regional superpower.

Blood and thunder, as they used to say, in the first, and comedy (at poor Theodora’s expense), in the second passage.

So who says history is boring? How can it be, telling the tales of how our world came to be as it is?

Because it’s all in the telling.

Both of the above passages come from the second volume of the author’s trilogy on the history of Byzantium; but as well-researched and written as it was, John Julius Cooper, the second Viscount Norwich was always considered a popular, rather than an academic historian. He did no less work, and consulted no fewer primary sources than any of the latter kind of historian - and I should know, because my MA is in Byzantine history, which I have continued to read and research for my historical fiction. But although having had no less than Sir Steven Runciman as a private tutor, as well as a degree from Oxford, he never worked in academia as a teacher. Rather, he travelled extensively (and wrote about it), and also did some work broadcasting with the BBC. He wrote extensively (after exhaustive reading and research) on the subjects that had caught his interest, and perhaps more importantly his imagination; the medieval history of Byzantium, the Norman and Muslim worlds, and Venice. And he, intentionally as people like to use that word today, wrote well. Relating the same history as so many others, but in such a way that it reads like a novel that you do not want to put down.

And as a complete aside, because of an unrelated but concerning Substack issue, I did change one thing in the above quotations. I used the shorter hyphen/dash where the Viscount employed the full em dash.

At first blush, one might think that he could do so because he was a non-academic, ‘popular’ historian, but as I have already said, his attention to the primary sources and secondary scholarship was as rigorous as any. One need only look to his bibliographies. Nor was he alone in this; other well-known historians of the Byzantino-Slavic world of the generations before, like Jenkins, Obolensky, Ostrogosky, and Vasiliev were far from boring, even though some were writing in a second language. And where gaps exist in our knowledge, they were not afraid to advance their own theories, although they were always careful to represent them as no more than such, no matter how well-supported by the evidence they were, and never failing to cite opposing points of view. As Norwich did in one instance with a wonderfully British caustic footnote to the effect that he was conveying ‘Prof. Bury’s opinion, not mine’.

One of the Russian historians did open his book with a rather fanciful presentation of his thoughts on the pre-history of the Slavic tribes (with which I simply cannot agree at all, but so what?), which he admitted was based on very flimsy evidence (and possibly some wishful thinking). The rest of his book, however, was as solid as history can be.

Viscount Norwich proved - as have others - that history need not be a dull recitation of facts, but can be written dramatically and with flair. And that is even when we only consider the known facts. He also showed that educated speculation regarding the gaps was not only permissible, but enlightening, as long as you keep the line between fact and opinion clear. And that history can indeed be made accessible to the reasonably educated layman, while at the same time contributing to the field with the above-mentioned arguments.

My dad was a newspaper man, and often told me the old journalists’ joke, ‘Never let the facts get in the way of a good story’. There is absolutely no need for historians to resort to any such measures though; the facts are generally enough, if related properly, and perhaps with a bit of a passion for them.

When I returned to university to do my MA (earned 2002) in the late 1990s, I was utterly shocked by what I found. I suppose I had thought that I could have just picked up where I had left off in 1987, before law school. Was I ever wrong. First, I was required to do a pre-Master’s year, because my (still 4-year, with graduate-level, including one self-directed, courses involved) BA with an ‘Advanced Major’ was not an Honours degree. It was a year of coursework. And then, when doing my Master’s, because I chose to undergo comprehensive examinations - written and oral - rather than writing a thesis, I was required to take a couple of courses outside my field of specialty, because I had to do more coursework than someone who had gone the thesis route.

I probably should have gone the thesis route.

Had I done that, I very likely would have spent a lot more time with my mentor, the late Prof. (also Rev. Dr.) John Wortley, who was definitely an old school historian who had himself cut his teeth on the books of some of the above-mentioned authors. And less time dealing with other approaches to and theories of history that I found far less engaging. And even he - I like to imagine reluctantly - had to assign a more modern treatment of the Byzantine Empire (rather than Vasiliev, whose text he had assigned in previous decades), which, though comprehensive, was dry to the point of unreadable. (Although, of course, I read it. With difficulty, and by the end, under protest.)

Simple recitations of events take away from their inherent drama. You can easily say that a particular battle was won, or a city taken, which lacks any colour when you don’t say how, or mention at least one action-packed or tense moment associated with it. And it even helps - at least to my mind - to remember events, if you recall some occurrence unique to them. Like at the above-mentioned Battle of Dorostolon, that one of the Byzantine commanders - leading from the front - allegedly cut a gigantic Pecheneg almost clean in twain with a single ferocious blow, so that the two halves of him fell from his horse in opposite directions!

I think Viscount Norwich was able to bring us closer to the action (and personalities, which he never failed to go into), because rather than taking the very high-altitude bird’s -eye view that many ‘academic’ historians deem necessary, he chose a much closer third-person POV to write in. Not omniscient, because he had to admit all the things we don’t know, but close enough to put the story in his history. He made you care about the people he wrote about - or, in some cases, dislike to a considerable degree. You know, like in a good story.

One of the things that confronted me when I returned to do my MA was a required course in historiography (the study of the study of history) in which I discovered how many ‘-isms’ and particular schools of thought there were in academic history, each, as they were based in various schools of philosophy or sociology, strove to make the subject even more boring and incomprehensible than the last. Materialism, structuralism, post-structuralism, post-modernism, etc. I was required to read Foucault (whom I could not get through), about the ’panopticon’, about ‘thick description’, and other things I care not to recall. Maybe I just wasn’t smart enough to understand this stuff, but I managed to pass the fucking course. Nevertheless, to my horror, some of the courses I took in the first year of my MA - none of them from Dr. Wortley, I assure you - started with further reading in this area of ‘theory’. In fact, Dr. Wortley once told me that at some point, a post-modernist scholar (I won’t even say ‘historian’) had asserted that if an educated layperson could understand one of his articles, it had been poorly written. We can hope that this story was apocryphal, but it would not surprise me in the least if it wasn’t.

The one ‘-ism’ that made sense to me came from the ‘feminist’ historians. Leaving aside well-grounded theories of the patriarchy, they sought to bring out the stories of the women that traditional histories had overlooked, and tried to determine, by proper and rigid historical research, what their lives had been like. A wonderful example in my own field would be the late Prof. Judith Herrin’s Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001), which featured discussions of the lives of three female members of Byzantine royalty, two of them relatively well-known to me, but the third of whom had not really crossed my radar at all. And I learned a great deal more about the first two than I had previously known. Incidentally, this work too, has been described as being aimed as much at the educated layperson as the academic.

Of course, they also tried to uncover a picture of what life was like for ordinary women, but this of course cannot really be completely separated from the history of ordinary men, and thus falls into what has been called ‘peasant studies’. Alongside this, of course, are studies of the rise of the mercantile (‘middle’) classes, etc. All of these can be interesting in their own right, although for myself, I am more interested in the development of customs (including the survivals of older ones that nobody was even sure why they still engaged in), than in any grand economic picture, whose importance I nevertheless thoroughly acknowledge.

My own particular interest (aside from battles) is in ancient pagan survivals, and how they often became co-opted by Christianity, and had their meanings transformed. Or, for stories, even better, the practices that the Church could not under any circumstances co-opt….

The ‘feminist’ historians at first often said that they were setting out to tell ‘herstory’, to put the ‘her’ into history. Something I agree with wholeheartedly; combing through the record to bring the lives of women into the spotlight that many older historians denied them. To me, it was the only ‘-ism’ that made a lick of damned sense.

Because I am about the story - his, hers, ours.

One of the questions that I chose to answer on my comprehensive written exam (I had options) in 2002, was whether or not I thought it was time to drop R.J.H. Jenkins’ book Byzantium: the Imperial Centuries A.D. 610- 1071, first published in 1966, from recommended reading. My answer was a resounding no, for much the same reasons given in this article. Prof. Jenkins, although correctives did need to be made, some of his material being a little out of date, wrote engagingly, and in a manner that made you want to turn the page and find out what happened next. Where he was giving his own opinion regarding a matter where there was a gap in our knowledge, he made that clear. Just like Norwich, who referred to him multiple times. We will not attract people to the study of history if the books on it are boring, or worse, unreadable. It’s not like law, where they’ll subject themselves to any level of torment, because they think it will make them rich. (And let me tell you, ‘cause I know, that is very far from inevitable.)

Even the professor who taught me the (hated) historiography class, and who was actually a very nice guy, once told me that he recalled some of his colleagues - not including Dr. Wortley - discussing whether or not they had gone so far as to take the joy out of their chosen field, by focusing too much on the minutae of statistics and the like, and trying to use them to show what social groups were dominant over what others, and by how much, etc. Not that those things aren’t important - they are, but might be more interesting if they were heavily supported by what is called (and sometimes dismissed as) ‘anecdotal’ evidence, like stories from diaries, contemporary newspapers, etc.

Another professor actually told me that he thought I should seriously consider working in popular, rather than academic history, because while I was a very good writer, who sometimes couldn’t hold back a little too much flair, my research was not up to his standards. (Nobody else had ever told me that, but of course nobody else had ever started a course on Renaissance Europe with readings from Foucault.) He was not at all unkind; history for the public is a good thing, a counterweight to the monotonous recitations of bored high school teachers who are not even able in many instances to control their classrooms. He suggested I could have made a good living at it, and that my books would probably have sold well in (then) McNally Robinson. He even used Pierre Berton as an example, as we were Canadian. Maybe he was right.

But the real issue he said he had with me was that I seemed more interested in foodstuffs discovered in the New World, than in the fact that the first Spanish contact with the indigenous peoples of the Americas brought about the deaths of thousands upon thousands of those peoples by violence and/or disease. But I did not deny that in any way, nor even fail to be moved by the (later, but more familiar to me) Cherokee Trail of Tears, Canada’s residential (‘kill the Indian in the child’) schools, Robert Pickton, nor hell, what I’ve seen with my own eyes in Winnipeg’s inner city. But I had decided to do my paper in his class on how the introduction of chocolate and chili peppers affected Western European cuisine and culture. You know, the cultural history that many of the above-noted went on so much about. And was interesting (did you know that for a while the magnates who haunted the coffee-houses of the Continent preferred hot chocolate over coffee?), but to him was more of a pleasant diversion than ‘real history’.

As an aside, if you are going to write historical fiction, you have to seriously research a lot of stuff just like that, because you want to get the details right.

And not interested at all in indigenous peoples? I think maybe I am more interested in their societies pre-European contact, but as they left no written records, that is the domain of anthropologists and ethnographers who collect and study the archaeological record and oral traditions. Imagine my own surprise and fascination (okay, delight) when about ten years ago, I read in the Winnipeg Free Press Weekend Edition that historical anthropologists had been able to put together, in its’ basics at least, a war that had erupted pre-European contact in the area that I lived. Apparently (if I have this right) a group from Manitoba’s northern Interlake region had inflicted a devastating raid on a group in the Dakotas, after which the second group launched a retaliatory raid against the first. There was even evidence of where the war parties had camped - the sites were hundreds of miles apart - which allowed their approximate routes to be reconstructed. Now that’s cool. And it definitely engaged my interest. Was their principal method of warfare raid and counter-raid? Did they ever fight pitched battles? Did they raid as infantry, by stealth, and fight larger engagements on horseback, like they were accustomed to from the buffalo hunt? I know they used a type of shield, but did they reinforce (by boiling it) the leather they wore to give it a quality of armour? Did they prefer to launch flights of arrows from distance, or close with their enemies? How did their bows compare with those of the Turkish horse-archers of the twelfth century? You know what? I think I’m gonna look this stuff up! Seriously. At least as much as we know.

And since we’ve moved into North America, I will give one last example from the late nineteenth century, as America expanded west. Another paper in another course. I had actually ordered books through inter-library loan, but unfortunately they did not arrive in time, so I had to make do with what I had. It won’t surprise you that the foremost of these books had simply been entitled The Gunfighters, and, along with several others, was coming from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, which apparently has one of THE collections on this subject….

But in talking to another graduate student who was studying this area and period, and was further advanced than me, working on his PhD (hell, they had even given him an office, because he was somebody’s T.A.), I discovered that what should have interested me were the patterns of investment in the competing mining and ranching concerns, and more importantly, the newspapers (and who owned them) and the effect of the telegraph on all of this, all viewed through a lens of having studied the theoretical works on capitalism.

All of which is very legitimate and interesting. As were - and would have been even more so to me - the conflicts between different levels of law enforcement, especially with the U.S. Army also being present, especially in the Federal Territories. Oddly enough, and I don’t mean this as any kind of joke at all, once this became the focus, the forcible relocation of thousands of Native Americans onto reservations was only discussed in the briefest passing.

But there are definitely stories that can be teased out of all of this, and some would no doubt be page-turners. But let’s just take a quick look at the most famous story of them all, which has been told and re-told many times, especially by Hollywood.

On Oct.26, 1881, the Earp brothers took their fateful walk up Fremont Street in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, allegedly to disarm the so-called ‘Regulators’, better known as the Clanton-McLaury gang, who had ensconced themselves next to a corral called - well, you know what it was called, because we are really into popular history now. But even so, not all of the events in the hours leading up to the showdown are clear, and we do have accounts that some of the gang actually fled, and others wanted to surrender, even though they outnumbered the Earps, and their unlikely ally, a dentist named William ‘Doc’ Holliday. ‘Doc’ had a marked preference for gambling over the practice of dentistry, and apparently knew full well that he was dying of tuberculosis. So maybe the movies have it right that he didn’t care if he lived or died on that street. (He was also very drunk, which surprisingly had little effect on his ability to handle a firearm.) The accounts are conflicting; nobody knows who actually drew or fired first. ( That being equal, I’ll take the version where Doc [in this case Val Kilmer] winked at Johnny Ringo….)

Over one hundred rounds were expended in the ensuing gun battle, and even though all but one took cover and fired from it, all but one were wounded, some of the ‘Regulators’ mortally. The only participant in the gunfight not to take cover was Doc Holliday, who just stood in the street and blazed away. He was also the only participant to come through without a scratch.

Now would you rather have read that, or about who supplied the general store, and how much was owed on it, and how the loan was secured? I don’t know the answer to that, except to say (possibly proving that one professor right) that I really don’t care. And I don’t want to be mean, but those that do are often the ones that end up writing the books and articles that trick students into thinking that history is boring.

Thank you for reading, if you’ve made it this far!

If you want to read any of my historical fiction that is not on my Substack, you can find a short one about about a tense few moments - literally life or death - in a Byzantine aristocratic household called ‘Just One Iota’ in Issue 1125 of the free online magazine Bewildering Stories (I love that title), or a novella on Amazon for Kindle called ‘1176’, which I wrote as a fictitious first-person account of the Battle of Myriocephalon. That was one of my earlier attempts at writing, and is a little heavy on the front end with preliminaries, but I still believe that if you can get through those, the action in the second half will more than repay you. It was self-published, and I believe it is eligible for Kindle Unlimited, but is also orderable in a trade paperback (print-on-demand) which is very readable in the sense of the type being very easy on the eyes.

And most of you have never heard of him.

Because he writes primarily in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

Now, of my regular readers, the boys from Incensepunk probably do know of him. But the others I regularly am in contact with - History Through Fiction, and Melissa Makarewiecz’s people, not so much. But along with historical fiction, a little sword and sorcery, and the above-noted incensepunk genre, 40K rounds out my interests. (Well, there is horror.) I have even gotten so far as publishing fanfiction on Discord. And I will give you some here, just you wait!

And he is probably the best writer of military sf since the late David Drake, belonging right up there with Jerry Pournelle and Joe Haldeman.

But this book is special.

Not least because Abnett provides an Afterword that is more than just a page or two, in which he discusses writing. But it contains spoilers, as he explains some of the decisions he made in writing the book, so don’t you dare go reading it first.

There are no spoilers in this review.

I will tease you with three things though. He tells us that he thinks ‘author’ is just a ‘50-quid [Abnett is English] word’ for ‘writer’, and that final revisions feel like being ‘a cosmetician in a mortuary’. But the big one is that he doesn’t really distinguish between ‘character-driven’, ‘plot-driven’, etc. He believes that they are really - along with ‘world-building’ ( a term he is surprisingly not crazy about, even though he is so damned good at it) - not as separate as most people make them out to be, but rather mutually drive each other as a story unfolds. He makes a good argument - and like I said, this guy [bloke?] has made his bones.

Now, I don’t think I’ve written a book review since 1985, and it was never something I was any damned good at anyway. And I don’t think I am proceeding in a very traditional manner.

This is more of a book promotion, for all the right reasons. I am excited about this book, and want to share it with you. I have long been on the lookout for a 40K book that would provide a good entry-point into that universe for someone who knew almost nothing about it, or its’ vast body of lore. THIS IS THAT BOOK. I used to recommend ‘Cadian Blood’ by Aaron Dembskii-Bowden, which I was fortunate enough to have as my introduction, and still would, if you want a shorter, easier read.

But again, this book is special.

You could just read it as a good sf book in its’ own right. (In fact, Abnett tells us in the Afterword that he had to make sure he made it enough 40K to still fit the IP.)

He need not have worried; it is definitely 40K, and veteran 40K readers will enjoy it. But in a different way than first-timers.

Not surprisingly, it is set in a huge hive-city, which might just be the biggest one we’ve ever encountered, and one that is very old. (If I’ve still got any of Melissa’s Jane Austen fans with me, don’t worry, the nature of a hive-city - and this one in particular - is explained in considerable detail.) But this hive is in some ways quite unique.

We start out with a purge by the Imperial authorities of a planetary regime that had been rife with corruption, following a kind of civil war on the planet with the only other city on it. Rather than replacing the old Lord Governor with another member of the Hive’s nobility, an off-worlder is sent to take the reigns of power, which is not terribly well-received. And recent privations (largely because of the war) have made serious insurrection a real threat, especially with a new ruler who does not have the support of vested interests.

That’s as far as I will go to introduce the story - no spoilers. But believe me, there is so much more to it than that. SO much more….

And it can be enjoyed in two ways. Those of us who know 40K will enjoy it one way, whereas first-timers will be greeted with a new universe that is gradually presented in a way that will not overwhelm them. There is even a little romance!

Now I’ll be honest, I bought this book almost by accident. I had been reading a couple of 40K books to strengthen my knowledge of the lore surrounding the Adeptus Mechanicus (who barely figure in this book at all), and my Kindle recommended it. I misread the description, and thought it was going to be a procedural featuring the Adeptus Arbites, the Imperial police organization who have jurisdiction on any planet they turn their attention to (who definitely figure in this book). But it was not that - well, it was that, but so many other things too.

Anyway, it was Abnett, whose other series I have enjoyed so much, especially Gaunt’s Ghosts. I still have about four books left to read in that 15-book sweeping account of the Tanith First and Only in the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, featuring Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt, who, along with Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch, are the contemporary literary characters who have the character to remind me of the importance of doing what’s right rather than what’s easy.

Those last two paragraphs contained more 40K lore than the vast majority of the Hive’s citizens would have learned in a lifetime. And the first-time 40K reader would be right along with them as events unfold. In this unusual stand-alone, Abnett discloses only the bare minimum any reader would need, and only when they need it. The seasoned reader can fill in the gaps, and he has structured it in such a way that it is massive fun to do so.

A good analogy could be made in the way my late (and deeply missed) wife Barbara and I enjoyed the Walking Dead universe. I started once TWD was a few seasons in, and binged it, becoming a superfan. But then the first spinoff came, Fear the Walking Dead, and I talked my wife into watching it. She was hooked instantly. But because she watched FTWD first, she was introduced to the universe differently. It was set in L.A. right at the start of the apocalypse, when nobody knows what the hell is going on. And that was her experience as a viewer, whereas mine was very different (‘No! Don’t go near that guy!) because I knew what was happening. Barbara became a huge fan of both shows too, by the way, but was one of the viewers who could not get past the infamous baseball bat scene, bless her heart.

But I will also be honest with you - this is a good book, but not an easy one - definitely no breezy beach read. In its’ paperback form, it is like one Stephen King’s old ‘doorstoppers’ like “The Stand”. It is roughly 750 pages, and has multiple storylines involving dozens of characters. And when an author has that many characters, just like in TWD, anyone can die at any time. And Abnett gets you invested in people, so this book is emotionally gruelling at points. In fact, outside of Ibram Gaunt and Harry Bosch, I don’t remember getting this invested in another writer’s characters since I read ‘The Mote in God’s Eye’, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle when I was about 16 (the first time I read it).

Also, like in the Gaunt’s Ghosts books, Abnett invents expressions and slang for this specific world, which can be jarring at first, but you get used to it. In fact, I have come within a hairsbreadth of using some of them in conversation these last couple of days! He also discusses this a bit in that Afterword, and gives cogent reasons for it - they serve the story.

I read it on my Kindle, which tells me the % of the book I have read. I will admit it was a bit of a slow burn, even though engaging throughout, but at 48% it hit unput-downable. And not long after that, Abnett reminded us that he can hit the nitrous oxide on top of that. But I will warn you, when I say there is graphic violence, I mean GRAPHIC VIOLENCE. But none of it is gratuitous, it is just realistic, with no punches pulled.

If I’ve convinced you to try dipping your toe into the Warhammer 40,000 universe, I will strongly recommend buying the book as an e-book, especially if you have ageing eyes like me. Unfortunately, Black Library usually publishes its’ paperbacks in pocketbook, rather than trade paperback format, with very small type. An e-reader is much easier on the eyes.

I really hope that some of you who have not read 40K before will give this one a go. I am certain it will leave you wanting more.

I have not posted for some time, as I have (obviously) been doing some reading, but I will write another story specifically for Substack very soon, but in between this and that, I plan something of a rant about academic history and historical fiction. Coming soon.

Please enjoy. Let me know what you think.

And again, if you like it, please restack!

So here we go….

In Re Voronenov

In the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal

(Leave to appeal to Supreme Court of Canada denied Feb.4, 2216)

McClintock, C.J., for the full Court,

Let me begin by stating that this matter was heard by the full Court of five justices, and that all four of my colleagues concur in these reasons. I apologize on the Court’s behalf for the length of time before it was rendered; however I should make clear that this had less to do with the intricacy of the case at bar, and was more due to the unfortunate and lengthy illness of Madame Justice Abwega, without whose input the rest of the Court did not feel comfortable proceeding. Happily, she has made a full recovery.

I begin in this manner because despite the complex and fascinating (in terms of ventures into areas of knowledge largely unfamiliar to the Court) arguments presented by all counsel, the decision itself was not a particularly difficult one, as we must always bear in mind that the most important issue in a probate case is always the intention of the testator.

The testator in this matter was the well-known space-mining entrepreneur Alexander Georgii Voronenov. At issue with respect to his last will and testament is a clause directing that his remaining (and controlling) interest in the corporation that he essentially built from the ground up by dint of his own efforts, Vorona Mining and Exploration (in its English version; the company is actually registered phonetically in its Russian form) devolve to ‘the next legitimate heir of his body’. This is a 53% share of the company, the rest having been sold to the Russian government for several billion International Credits two decades ago in order to finance exploration in the asteroid belt that exists in the vast gulf of space between Mars and Jupiter.

Mr. Voronenov married only once, and was widowed thirty-eight years ago. The couple had had only one son, Fyodor Alexandrovich Voronenov, who married and also had only one child, Oleksana Fyodorovna Voronenova, whose legitimacy and capacity to inherit this enormous fortune (and the political power that admittedly goes with it) is the subject of these proceedings. Fyodor and his wife, Oleksana’s mother, died in a mining transport crash when Oleksana was nineteen; today she is twenty -eight.

I realize that when I mention ages, I should probably say ‘Terran Standard Years’, as I have a feeling that that may become an important distinction in the decades and centuries to come.

Oleksana is the only descendant of the testator. The issue before the learned trial judge in the King’s Bench Probate Division was her actual legitimacy. The testator’s will, written before her birth, stated very clearly that only a legitimate descendant could inherit. Otherwise, the majority share of Vorona Mining and Exploration [hereinafter Vorona M&E] would be put up for auction to the highest bidder, with the proceeds to go to a list of the testator’s favourite charities.

At what is considered its current (or at least likely potential) value, there are almost no individuals, and few corporations (aside from those based in the Republic of California, who are bringing this action) who could afford to buy it. It would most likely only be affordable to a government. While the Court cannot allow its decisions to be influenced by outside politics, and must follow the laws of inheritance as they have evolved from time immemorial (as altered by statute, where the case may be), we cannot help but be aware that, among others, Russia, the Eastern States of America, the European Alliance, the Caliphate, and indeed Canada are all preparing for a bidding war, possibly with some pooling resources.

The City of Moose jaw, Saskatchewan was the birthplace of the testator, and where he lived a good part of his life, and apparently considered home. It is where he filed the will, and where the head office of Vorona M&E has always been located, and where it pays its taxes. Consequently, Saskatchewan courts have jurisdiction over this matter.

Based upon the reading of the will, the learned trial judge, Running Fox, J. was correct in her ruling that ‘legitimate’ meant legitimate in the eyes of, and in accordance with the canons of the Russian Greek Orthodox Church. Not only did the definitions section of the document make this clear, but supporting evidence was adduced as to how devout Mr. Voronenov was, and how active in his church.

Which brings us directly to the sole issue in the case at bar. Ms. Voronenova [hereinafter Oleksana for greater ease of clarity of reference] was properly baptised as an infant into the Church, and that is not an issue. Rather, the issue is as to the legitimacy of her birth; was the marriage of her parents canonically valid?

Like Oleksana’s baptism (and ultimately the testator’s funeral), the marriage of her parents took place on Mars.

Without lengthening this judgement unnecessarily with a great deal of background information, the basics are unavoidable in making this Court’s decision understandable. Perhaps fortunately, although some were cited at trial, this is such virgin territory (at least for non-ecclesiastical courts), there is really no case law to be relied upon.

In the steps the human race has taken outwards from the cradle of its’ home planet Earth (technically Terra), colonies have been established over the last two centuries on both the Moon and Mars, for various purposes, both scientific and commercial, and when we speak of the latter, we generally mean mining.

The colony of Novaya Ladoga is one of the oldest on Mars, having been founded well over a century ago, and being at least two-thirds subterranean (sub-Martian?), as its builders were able to use an existing system of caves they were able to make habitable after construction of the above-surface section of the colony on top of them. As with most colonies, their current ethnic makeup reflects that of their builders, and Novaya Ladoga is no exception. Ninety percent of its population of just under one thousand souls derive from either Russia proper, or the eastern Ukraine, and a good part of the remaining ten percent (including the testator and his granddaughter) are descendants of the twentieth century Russian and Ukrainian diasporas.

Novaya Ladoga was the first colony, Moon, Mars, or orbital, to have anything more than a tiny, non-denominational chapel. The building of anything more, and the effort and cost of maintaining it, not to mention the use of space that could be dedicated to housing, hydroponics, repair facilities, etc., would have made such an undertaking untenable for even the wealthiest of the corporations that run most of the colonies.

But not for a state actor, a government. No western government could probably justify such an expense to its taxpayers, especially where the separation of church and state is one of the foundations of the political compact. But Russia could and did, and at mind-boggling expense. An entire cavern was repurposed into as close a facsimile - actually, we should not say ‘facsimile’ - it is a Russian Greek Orthodox church, complete with not one, but two priests, their families, deacons, and ‘readers’, the latter drawn from the station’s existing population. And anyone who has ever seen an Orthodox church knows that it is a feast for the eyes, decorated floor to ceiling with frescoes, mosaics, and most importantly, often priceless icons. This church is no different, as Russia spared no expense. Monks who were master-painters made the journey from Earth and back to paint the walls and ceiling, while icons were donated by Orthodox churches from all over the world, and sent, regardless of the still considerable cost-by-weight of shipping cargo in space, some of them reputed to date all the way back to Byzantine times. Precious relics of saints were also donated. The testator himself in the case at bar contributed not insignificantly to this project.

While the cynical view it as a show of Russian ability to project power, the fact is that to this day it remains the only church on an extraterrestrial colony, although it is the Court’s understanding that the Caliphate is well into the construction of a mosque on its lunar colony, and there is intense discussion going on in India regarding the construction of a temple that could somehow be shared by both Hindus and Sikhs on India’s largest Martian colony.

Fyodor’s was the first marriage to be celebrated in the new church.

Unfortunately, the day it was celebrated on corresponded to August 3 on Earth, which is part of the two-week fast preceding the Feast of the Dormition of the Virgin (the death or ‘falling asleep’ of the Virgin Mary) on August 15. During these two weeks (as well as many other times throughout the liturgical calendar) no weddings may be canonically performed.

Yet priests who surely knew this - they had been selected for the Martian church because of their experience and reputations - performed the wedding.

Prima facie, experienced clergymen saw no problem with the date. (And, the Court notes in passing, up until this came up in probate, noone else did either.)

So, the question becomes, does Mars have a liturgical calendar of its own, differing from the Terran one, or is it tied to the Terran one somehow, day for day?

A great deal of scientific evidence was presented at trial before Running Fox, J., much of which only serves to occlude the issue, in the opinion of this Court.

First of all, Running Fox, J. made specific findings of fact that the clergy who celebrated the wedding believed that they were canonically permitted to do so. They had been completely cognizant of the fast period preceding the Fast of the Dormition. But for them, the wedding fell outside of the prohibited period, as they had counted fifteen days back from the Feast, and were agreed that the date set for the wedding was outside that.

Running Fox, J. made further findings of fact that Oleksana had never doubted the validity of her parents’ union, and that all of the evidence from persons associated with the two could only be considered as consistent with both Mr. Voronenov and Oleksana’s beliefs to be the same. They had a very good relationship, and Oleksana became more and more involved in the business, in full expectation of eventually taking it over.

So should they have counted Martian days or Terran days?

The argument was made at trial that because lunar colonies adhere to the Terran liturgical calendar, so should Martian ones.

The learned trial judge dismissed that argument for reasons that this Court adopts in their entirety. The Moon is a satellite of Earth or Terra, if you will, and beyond that, is even tidally locked, which means that although it orbits the parent planet according to a regular pattern, it does not itself rotate, and only shows one face to Terra at all times. Hence the phrase ‘dark side of the moon’.

All of the lunar colonies keep a day/night cycle to mirror that of Earth.

So on the Moon, there is simply no reason to not follow the Terran liturgical calendar.

The Martian day, or ‘sol’ is approximately twenty-four and one-half Terran hours, making the length of the day/night cycle very close. However, the orbit of Mars around the Sun gives it a year virtually twice that of a Terran one.

Naturally, the argument was made that the Martian calendar should simply count two days for every Terran day, thus avoiding having two Christmases per year, two Easters, etc.

Yet on the other hand, why not have two Christmases, when the year is twice as long? It is not as though the days are shorter; rather, they are marginally longer.

At this point, though, Mars slaves itself to Earth’s calendar for the major feasts like Christmas and Easter. Nonetheless, there has been no ecclesiastical ruling saying that the in-between days have to be counted as two-for-one. In other words, it is possible to have a fixed date (corresponding to the Terran one) for the Feast of the Dormition, but count back only fifteen Martian days for the fast.

And to be honest, there are so many fasts in the Orthodox calendar that the Court is fairly certain the faithful would have no desire to double their length.

But that is only an opinion of this Court, not a ruling, as that falls - especially within our system of separation of church and state - to the ecclesiastical authorities.

In the twentieth century, a theoretical calendar called the Darien was put forward for Mars, with twenty-four months. But it was never seriously considered, nor could any consensus be reached as to when it started, i.e., when was the first day of Year One? There were two main arguments, the first that it was completely dependent on human space travel, and that it would begin when we first landed on Mars. The other was that Mars was independent of Earth, and most of its proponents wanted Year One to begin - or have begun - the day of Mars’ last equinox prior to the proposal of the calendar, which had occurred in the nineteenth century.

While these issues, presented by a veritable parade of well-credentialled experts at trial, are very interesting, for the most part, they only cloud the main issue in the case at bar.

They do, however, make the point that, unlike the Moon, Mars is its own planet, and it might be better to let Martian clerics decide these issues for their churches.

Argument also surrounded especially (to make an example) the dating of Easter. Should the Martian faithful have Easter twice a year? Or should they have it once, but stretch Easter weekend over six days - two for Good Friday, two for Easter Saturday, and two for Easter Sunday?

Easter is what the Church calls a ‘movable feast’, as it does not occur on the same day every year. Rather, as the Court understands it, it is celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Jewish Passover. This is some very Earth-specific dating. And it still runs into the problem referred to in the preceding paragraph.

You have to have a full moon following the Jewish Passover. But what if the Jews have not declared a Passover date for Mars? As well, Mars would have to determine when Earth (another planet) had a full moon.

Mars could not use its’ own moons, Phobos and Deimos, first of all, because there are two of them, and one of them actually appears to rise and set three times a day - I suppose we should say ‘sol’ - and looks as though it rises in the west and sets in the east. (This is not actually the case; the phenomenon is simply the result of Mars’ own rotation being faster than the orbit of a moon which is very close to it.)

It was also noted that Easter is traditionally a spring festival, and Mars does have seasons, especially in the equatorial zones. If Mars did not come up with its own dating system and simply followed Terra’s, that aspect of Easter would become completely out of synch, having it sometimes fall in the middle of winter, or summer, or autumn.

As to the seasons, I cannot speak for my colleagues on this one matter, but I found it absolutely jaw-dropping to hear that in the equatorial zones, in the summer, the temperatures can reach between plus ten and twenty degrees centigrade. I had thought it a constantly frozen ball of ice!

But since all Mars-dwellers live in hermetically sealed compounds, the Court doesn’t really see ‘seasons’ as having all that much import in this matter. Perhaps if the old dream of terraforming ever came to fruition, and Mars could be given an atmosphere in which humans could walk around without protective gear….

Mars definitely is its own planet.

As such, it could very well develop its own liturgical calendar. And yet, it has been the first extraterrestrial planet to be colonized, and so may be a special case. In the sense of simply somehow following Earth’s liturgical calendar.

Perhaps so long as it was recognized as a special case. But then where does that stop?

It has been suggested that if we build outposts on asteroids in the belt, they will simply follow Mars. And if we build any habitats - which we certainly will - then they in turn would follow either Mars or Earth, depending who built them. (And we have to acknowledge that the colonization of Mars, as much as it is about exploration and scientific discovery, is about its being a stepping stone to asteroids, such as 16 Psyche in particular, whose iron deposits alone are considered to be worth potentially in the quadrillions of International Credits.)

And beyond that? The Jovian moons beckon, particularly Europa, and possibly Io. And then the moons of Saturn and Neptune, not to mention the atmospheres of those very gas giants themselves, from which we may be able to harvest useful resources.

And beyond that…?

This is surely the strangest decision I have ever written, and possibly the strangest this or any court has handed down. Without case law, it seems more like a science fiction story than a judgement.

But eventually, humanity will hopefully, slowly but surely, reach for the stars. And it is entirely possible that that push may be made by the likes of Vorona M&E, rather than traditional nation-states. Whether this is bad or good, it is not the Court’s place to say. But it is difficult to be unaware that Vorona M&E has been robustly expanding its private security forces in order to 1.) protect the claims its unmanned probes have already staked, and 2.) maintain control of the transit points back to Mars and presumably Earth.

I say ‘presumably’, because if these colonies grow - as planned - to the point that they are self-sufficient, and no longer need an Earth that is still trying to impose its will upon them - I fear that history is replete with examples of what can happen then.

Especially considering the difficulties this our home planet faces, admittedly of our own making, that seem only to become worse, year after year. One can imagine a dark future for this planet, as the centre of gravity, if the Court may be pardoned the expression, of human civilization shifts away from it. Nostalgia will only support it for so long, but renewed interest in the interior planets, Venus and Mercury, and the recent re-assessments of the potential value of each may help, keeping Earth an important waypoint in between.

And those planets too, although only touched upon in argument at trial, have their own peculiarities which would affect anything other than an orbital habitat attuned to replicate Earth’s day/night cycle, which, without seasons, could again keep the Terran liturgical calendar.

The same could be said of colonies or habitats not orbiting Europa, but rather on its’ ocean floor near the energy of magma vents, yet beneath surface ice as much as fifteen miles thick. Or perhaps even smaller, mobile habitats that could move about as need be. Or, if one lets the imagination loose, but not completely off the hook (and allowing it to take an optimistic view of the future) a number of habitats that would be connected via some type of submarine fleet.

These examples were used in argument before Running Fox, J., to try to make the point that a Terran calendar could be kept by almost any habitat built in this solar system. In the centuries to come, should we find our way to other star systems, we could adapt to them on a case-by-case basis.

So the habitats on the surface of Mars become exceptions to the general rule, if that is how the future unfolds.

It is perhaps worth adding at this point that the materials to build such habitats would, at least for the foreseeable future, be sourced on site, probably after an initial deployment of large, modular spacecraft that could be turned into living and working quarters for the architects, engineers, and other scientists needed to build them.

Mars is iron-rich, which allows for the manufacture of composite materials for the building of durable habitats, but has also been found to have several cave systems, like that at Novaya Ladoga, allowing the majority of the habitat to be built underground, and thus sheltered from the often ferocious dust-storms that that plague the surface of the planet. While it was argued that these, too, could be placed on a Terran day/night cycle, the fact remains that - probably because they were so close to one anyway - they never were, and the length of the calendar year was never considered a problem, until now.

But unless we find something we are not expecting, Mars, like the Moon, is really only a stepping-stone, an experiment in extraterrestrial living, on the way out to where the real riches will be found.

And even though it has been international law since the third quarter of the twentieth century that no nation nor individual (nor obviously corporation) can claim ownership of anything outside the bounds of planet Earth, mining claims can be ‘staked’ by exploratory vessels, and Vorona M&E has done just that with 16 Psyche, as well as a couple of other potentially very valuable asteroids.

That sale of forty-seven percent of the corporation to Russia is what financed the launch and subsequent activities of those unmanned spacecraft; an investment that could bring fabulous returns.

Should the Court rule the marriage of Oleksana’s parents invalid according to the laws of the Church, the bidders are already lined up for what was meant to be her fifty-three percent.

Because of the claims already staked, the political implications of the decision could be enormous, but we must, as judges, try to ignore that, and focus solely on the legal issue before us.

At first instance, Running Fox, J. ruled that the marriage had been valid, as the priest who performed it, as well as his colleague who assisted him, must have counted the days back from the Feast of the Dormition, and found them to have been more than fifteen, although it was only August 3 on Earth. ‘If the priests had been satisfied,’ she wrote, ‘then she was satisfied.’

There was apparently quite an uproar in her courtroom when she delivered her decision, with one executive from a competitor shouting that she had ‘given the future to Russia’, as it was clear that Oleksana, if she retained her shares, would continue with the partnership her grandfather had already forged. Running Fox, J. had had to have Sherriff’s officers forcibly restrain that individual and remove him, along with several others. Emotions ran very high.

That was the reason for the presence of police in full riot gear throughout the hearing before this Court.

It is not our belief that the learned trial judge had any intention of handing Russia the future of humanity. She was merely trying to give effect to the testator’s intention, as in any probate matter.

And had she ruled opposite, to whom would she then have been handing the future to? Huge bids, as mentioned at the outset, are being prepared by two corporations out of the Republic of California, the Eastern States of America, the European Alliance, the Caliphate, and of course, Russia.

Canada is also prepared to bid, and a Canadian Court cannot but acknowledge the significance of this, as over the last century and more, Canada’s relations with Russia have become more cordial, while relations with the old USA’s successor states (excepting the Republic of California) have been, for the most part, eroding.

The progressive melting of the Arctic icecaps, and resulting discovery after discovery of both energy and mineral wealth in the far north have made neighbors of Canada and Russia ‘across the roof of the world.’ The Canadian, Russian, and Danish militaries have safeguarded this vast region they share, which includes Canada’s ‘Arctic Empire.’ Access is sometimes permitted to other nations or corporate entities, but not readily, saving for heavily-monitored travel through the Northwest Passage.

It is also rumoured that Canada might pool resources with the European Alliance (which includes Denmark), or Russia, or even both to make a successful bid.

Of course, it is to be noted that Canada likely comes out a winner anyway should Oleksana inherit. Although she was born and raised for the most part on Mars, she, like her grandfather was, is also a Canadian citizen, who spent her university years on Earth, in Canada, studying business first at the University of Saskatchewan, and then completing an advanced degree at the University of Manitoba. And as already noted above, Vorona M&E is headquartered in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada, where it pays its taxes.

So while painfully aware of the potential political ramifications of any decision, it is the Court’s sworn duty to maintain political neutrality, and decide this matter strictly in accordance with established probate law.

To begin with, from our reading of the transcripts from the court below, Running Fox, J. is to be commended simply for maintaining control of her courtroom throughout the proceedings, and while the challenge was brought by both the Microsoft-Google Corporation and the Republic of California, she was right to deny intervenor status to the eleven other entities who sought it. She believed that once the canonical issues regarding the marriage were made clear to her, she could make a ruling. And that she did, upholding the validity of the marriage, and thus Oleksana’s legitimacy in accordance with Orthodox canon law. Her reasons were straightforward and well-articulated - the clergy of Novaya Ladoga saw no impediment, so there must not have been one, for the reasons already given regarding the counting of days.

We have outlined how Mars might be unique in terms of the application of a liturgical calendar. The Court believes Running Fox, J.’s reasoning was sound, but based upon a kind of ‘let them make it up as they go’ view.

Respectfully, the Court believes her to have been mistaken in this.

Regardless of the experience, competence, and ability of the Martian clergy, none held a rank higher than priest. It is this Court’s respectful view that a decision on the canonical validity of the marriage (which perforce includes a decision on a liturgical calendar for Mars) should be made by a higher ecclesiastical authority, and it becomes the Court’s duty to determine the appropriate one to which to refer the matter, and then abide by its decision.

That the church and clergy were Russian Greek Orthodox is clear.

But the Church, like the Court, has a hierarchy. Parish priests are subject to their bishop (usually one for a large city, or several smaller ones and their hinterlands), who is in turn subject to an archbishop (or metropolitan, as the Orthodox often call him), who has jurisdiction over a larger geographical area including several bishoprics. Questions of canon law go up that ladder, and, on rare occasions, on to a Patriarch, who is usually the head of the Orthodox Church of a country. And while there is still a titular Patriarch of Constantinople (Istanbul), his technical precedence over Orthodox Christians everywhere is honourary only. He does not claim canonical jurisdiction over them, as the Pope does over all Catholics (challenged though he currently is by the Archbishop of Kampala). Again, for all intents and purposes, the Orthodox Church is a state church.

So to which Russian Greek Orthodox Church does Novaya Ladoga belong?

This issue was discussed only briefly at trial.

This Court is unanimously of the view that this was a mistake, and allowed the sole issue to be obscured by the sheer volume of information and argument put forward.

Ecclesiastical courts exist for a reason, and are not merely some historical curiosity. And this is a matter which must be decided by a church court, not a secular one.

Probate itself will be decided by this Court, but will essentially be a formality once we are given a ruling on the legitimacy of Oleksana.

So we will refer this question directly to the appropriate metropolitan, and proceed in accordance with his judgement.

While, as previously stated, neither countries, corporations, nor individuals may claim territory off this planet, unless it is a space station or habitat built by them. But the treaty or treaties in question do not apply to ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

So perhaps ecclesiastical jurisdiction can still be determined the same way territorial (and along with it ecclesiastical) jurisdiction was claimed in the age of exploration/conquest/settlement (however one wishes to call it, and regardless of how uncomfortable it may make one - this is a problem that has to be resolved).

In those days of wood and sail, any newly discovered (by Europeans) and physically set foot upon lands were claimed for the port the explorer’s ship had set out from, and thus the country that port belonged to.

We asked for, and received cogent argument from all counsel in this matter, and we thank them for the straightforward manner in which they couched both written and oral submissions on the issue we asked them to.

It is generally believed that the first Terran spacecraft to land on Mars was the former USA’s Viking 1 in 1976, to be followed shortly afterwards by Viking 2.

These were successful landings, and both of these craft began to gather all sorts of data that started building our knowledge of the ‘Red Planet.’ Weather, soil samples, etc. The Viking spacecraft were launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Cape Canaveral, in terms of the Russian Greek Orthodox Church in the USA (not to be confused with the Orthodox Church of America), fell under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Orlando, Florida, who was in turn subject to a metropolitan based in Atlanta, Georgia (now part of the E.S.A.), who held jurisdiction over the southeast of the old USA.

But there was another landing, prior to the Viking missions. The Russian (then USSR) spacecraft Mars 3 landed in 1971, but only broadcast information back to Earth for fifteen seconds before all contact with it was permanently lost.

A crash doesn’t count, and if that were the case, then Viking 1 would have clear priority.

But convincing evidence (including translated audio of old Russian mission control conversations) has been presented that this was not a crash.

The spacecraft (‘mothership’, if you will) experienced a technical problem while in Mars orbit, and had to do an ‘emergency burn’, using up its’ remaining fuel, and leaving it in a very suboptimal position for the launch of its’ lander. But launch it did, and the records prove the landing to have been a ‘soft’ or successful one. Not only was it successful, but was managed in a raging dust-storm. The lander came down fully intact, and began to broadcast as planned. But that same dust-storm cut short the transmission after fifteen seconds, likely through damaging the lander’s communications equipment. But that only happened post-successful landing, and after fifteen seconds of normal, functioning transmission. At the risk of being terribly repetitive, it was a successful landing, just in an inopportune zone due to an emergency.

So the Russians, in the view of this Court, beat the Americans to Mars. That means that ultimately, this matter falls to the Patriarchate of Moscow, although we are referring it to the Metropolitan of Kazakhstan, who has authority over the Bishop of Kyzylorda and Aral, in which was (and still is) situated Baikonur Cosmodrome, from which Mars 3 was launched, and was then part of Soviet Kazakhstan.

Does this give the Muscovite Patriarchate all of Mars for the Orthodox? That is a question for the ecclesiastical authorities, or possibly even a Church Council.

But it gives jurisdiction over Novaya Ladoga, as, fortunately, Novaya Ladoga is quite close to the Mars 3 landing site (less than fifty kilometers away), much closer than to either of the Viking sites.

So, with the greatest of respect, we are going, through the proper channels, to refer this matter to the Russian Greek Orthodox Metropolitanate of Kazakhstan, with the possibility of appeal therefrom to the Patriarchate of Moscow.

So it is in a Russian jurisdiction that the validity of the marriage in question will be decided, much as this may displease many parties.

Two things will be decided.

First, was the marriage valid or not?

Secondly, even if the marriage was not valid canonically, could a retroactive act of oikonomia be resorted to to make it valid?

This is somewhat, but not exactly like a Papal dispensation in the Catholic Church. It is a discretionary act, meant to countenance a breach of the law, as a lesser evil, to prevent a greater evil. This Court refuses to offer any opinion as to what a ‘greater evil’ would be. Perhaps the Metropolitan will consider the political ramifications of any decision as paramount, in terms of what difficulties could arise, or be prevented from arising. Or perhaps he may decide to leave power politics out of it, and consider the greater evil to be any frustration of the testator’s intention.

It is worth noting that even if she loses, Oleksana will be left far from penniless; she already had considerable money of her own, as well as having had substantial joint accounts with the testator, which of course are now already hers alone.

Once we have received the answer, we will accordingly complete probate.

Appearances:

H. J. Schindlot, for Microsoft-Google Corp.,

Appellant

R. J. Schlevins and J. T. S. Walker for the Republic

of California, Appellant

J. Q. McGraw, for Oleksana Vorononova,

Respondent

I don’t really keep up on things that well, but I understand that there has been some controversy about stories and novels partially generated by AI, and even some that have won prestigious literary prizes. This is really scary. The one good thing is that there are people out there who caught it. Writing stories is a human thing, because it is about the human experience, at least so far.

Since I live at night, I actually came across and read a strange and disturbing Substack post which disappeared within hours, as it was probably taken down. In it, the author promised to come to the house of anyone who used AI to write and kill them with a knife. He also made some pretty racist comments. Here in Canada, I’m not sure whether they would have qualified as ‘hate speech’, but I know that the above threat - which he was very serious about, and repeated multiple times - would definitely qualify as ‘uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm’ under the Criminal Code of Canada. I wanted to actually say that in response to this tirade, but there was no ability given by the post to comment back, only to ‘donate money to his legal defence fund.’ I just thought that whole episode was really weird.

I also watched the most recent Substack livechat, where the interviewee said that he chose to be optimistic about AI, going so far as to say that the machine, or machine intelligence can be considered the seventh kingdom of life. He said that AI is part of the natural progression and evolution of any intelligent species, and how it behaves will depend on how we use it.

Now I am going to go on a big digression, because I am an SF, etc. guy who talks a lot about this stuff with different people. But bear with me, because I will tie it in. In the universe of Warhammer 40,000, the best human fighters are female - the Adepta Sororitas - because despite probably having a few augmetics, they are simply the top of the top in human physical and mental conditioning. But although it is uncommon, one can leave the Sororitas, because they are still human. Yet humanity’s most powerful warriors are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, who can only be made from young males, because apparently the female body rejects some of the nineteen different implants a candidate gets. All experiments have failed, with the females dying in agony. The final implant is the Black Carapace, which allows the Space Marine’s power armour to directly interface with his central nervous system - a true cyborg. The Sororitas also use sophisticated power armour and weapons, but not like the Space Marines. The Sororitas take a vow of chastity, while part of the process of becoming a Space Marine removes any interest in sex, and they cannot procreate anyway. They have only dim memories of their previous selves, if any at all. Death is the only way out of the Space Marines. They are, arguably, post-human.

And the machine-priests and priestesses of the Adeptus Mechanicus directly interface with their ‘cogitators’, sometimes entire starships - but the human is always in control. Although with them, too, in some cases, it is debatable how much ‘human’ remains.

The reason I bring up this science fantasy universe is exactly that.

I truly fear the machine, and the possibility of a machine intelligence that becomes self-aware. An intelligence that decides that it no longer needs its’ creators, nor to serve them. Or one that simply decides that our impact on the ecosystem is too destructive, and that thus, for the good of the planet as a whole, we have to go. Machines that self-replicate. A machine that fundamentally misinterprets this directive to continue self-replicating until it has used every speck of mass in our solar system, including us. The machine may not even be malevolent, just misguided. Perhaps there are machine civilizations out there that are the sole legacy of the races that created them. Please don’t think of some utopia for the ducks and rabbits, think more like Fred Saberhagen’s Berserkers, or the original series Star Trek episode ‘The Doomsday Machine.’

The answer probably lies in cybernetics, where machines are always subject to human control, because they are part of a human, kind of like the Space Marines. The machines would then not ever be completely autonomous, and that is where we can look with some optimism to the future. The purpose of the machine is to assist humanity and serve it, not act in its’ own interests, or the interests of anything or anyone other than its’ human masters. (If we order them to exterminate the ducks, they just do it.) We are already at the baby steps of cybernetics - pacemakers, my hearing aids, better and better prosthetic limbs. I read somewhere that the Japanese were experimenting with an exoskeleton for paralyzed persons that could act as an artificial body, and help them to move around and manipulate things. The idea is to (once again) link it directly into the brain, so that it would literally be controlled by thought. What if some humans could have augmentations made to their brains to help them make faster calculations, so that we could solve physics problems, rather than having some computer solve what human mathematicians have been unable to solve for decades? This way we always remain in control. So maybe the seventh kingdom isn’t the machine, but the fusion of human and machine. The cyborg. That would give me optimism, that would be (hopefully) ensuring that our own creations do not destroy us.

And it was said in the interview that all intelligent species in the universe would eventually develop AI.

That’s probably right. And it probably gives us a potentially chilling answer to the Fermi Paradox. The management of AI, keeping it under control, could well be the Great Filter. If you don’t contain it within useful parameters, it will either intentionally or even unintentionally bring about your extinction.

If you don’t know, the Fermi Paradox is the simple question of if, with all the trillions of star systems out there (and we now know that the majority of stars have planets, if I understand correctly), there must be thousands of planets upon which intelligent life evolved (although there are arguments against this, too; we have gotten lucky with a few things on this planet). Then where are they? Why have we detected no signals, nor has anyone tried to communicate with us?

Are they just not there? Did they reach a certain stage, and then get wiped out? Perhaps by their own creations?

After all, we’ve not only been listening, but also looking? At what? Variations in the light of certain stars that would indicate occlusion by something other than a planet (we’ve found lots of those ‘exoplanets’ already). Something like a partial Dyson sphere, or simply huge arrays of some advanced version of solar panels to provide power to planets and artificial habitats, trying to capitalize as much as possible on the parent star’s energy.

As far as I know, I have not seen much astronomy news lately, but about five or six years ago, I know there was some excitement regarding a star 1100 light years away, called Gliese something something. I don’t know if it amounted to anything.

Are we just unlucky, looking at the wrong parts of the sky, when the universe is so vast?

Or are they deliberately hiding?

This possibility was brought into sharp focus by the author Cixin Liu in his award-winning trilogy starting with ‘The Three-Body Problem’, which has been turned into a TV series. I read the trilogy, and found it absolutely terrifying. Especially the second book, ‘A Dark Forest’, in which he postulates that everybody is hiding like animals in a dark forest at night. The reason: any intelligent, technological species is a potential threat to any other ones. Even if currently behind, there can, due to a variety of possibilities, be sudden leaps; the advance of scientific knowledge will not have to follow the same straight line in every case. Cixin Liu followed this to a logical conclusion that I am not sure many Western writers would have dared to. When the survival of your species is at stake, no amount of risk, however small, is acceptable in the face of a potential existential threat. Even if another civilization poses no threat to you now, they may in the future. The only acceptable level of risk is zero. So if two intelligent technological species find each other, one will exterminate the other. Xenocide, just to be on the safe side. And if that’s the case, and there is no United Federation of Planets, nor any Prime Directive, then everybody’s hiding, and for good reason.

And us, sending out signals saying hello, and all the information on the Voyager spacecraft, describing our physiology, culture, and precise location.

Myself, I’ve always thought of the universe as the next big ecosystem. Any spacefaring civilization is already an apex predator species. Any other species they meet will be the same. And if they have to compete for the same resources, well, then, they will really see the war to end all wars. The best hope for us is that such species (those few that survived the Great Filter) are far enough apart that they never have to come into conflict. And that if we do have to come into conflict, that we are capable of being the last ones standing.

So those are my thoughts on AI. It’s not just cheating. In the larger scale of things, it’s dangerous.

On a brighter note, I promise my next post will be another free story!

But before historical fiction came sword and sorcery, and in fact, historical fiction came because of sword and sorcery, such as not only Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane, Conan, Bran Mak Morn, and Kull S&S tales, but then also his historical ones like ‘Lord of Samarkand’, ‘Red Blades of Black Cathay’, or ‘Sword Woman’.

So, for now and for the foreseeable future (although I will, if my work gets enough interest, eventually put up a very low paywall for some stories), I will be putting up free historical fiction pieces set in my beloved Byzantine Empire, sword and sorcery pieces tied to that same historical setting, and maybe some incensepunk-genre science fiction. I will also - always free, in the hope that that will keep Games Workshop’s lawyers from coming after me - try to put up some Warhammer 40,000 fanfiction.

As I did mention in my last post, one of my biggest problems is my ineptitude with computers. I had thought I could give you guys one of the historical stories I had already written, but the problem is that I can’t figure out how to drag and drop the right file types on my computer. But I will figure that out when I can get together for a few minutes with our IT guy. Also, I should simply be able to create a link or hyperlink to any document, and let the potential reader simply click on it. But again, we’re talking about me. Another thing I should be able to figure out with the IT guy in less than a minute when he shows me how easy it probably is.

So this first one I did not wait for help on; I just decided to write you guys a brand new fresh story, set in historical time (but not with a specific date, although you are welcome to make educated guesses) with a good dose of swords and deviltry in it (anyone get THAT reference?), as well as actual Norse/Slavic folklore. And the next one will be a different kind of story, also written freshly for Substack, but it will be shorter.

This one is fairly long for a short story (over 12,000 words), but according to Substack, that will be fine if I just send it out in email form. It might end up clipped in a couple of places, where you will just have to click on ‘show trimmed content’ to see the rest, although you will have to scroll back down, because it will throw you right back up to the top. Same problem with the footnotes (actually endnotes) - sorry about that; I will get better at this! I also didn’t try the preview option, because I was afraid that I would somehow lose the whole thing.

Let me know if you like it, hate it, or anything in between. If you do like it, please restack it. I need all the help I can get!

Thank you for your patience.

Here we go ….

The Actual Story

********************

My father’s hall fell as silent as ever it could, save for the sounds of tankards being drained and refilled, and the clatter of serving-boards.

I knew I would have no problem being heard over it. I was good at this. After all, weren’t heroes supposed to be able to relate their own exploits, and in dramatic fashion, their voices filling snowbound halls to their farthest corners?

And I wasn’t just any hero, at least not in the eyes of my listeners. My warband and I had returned all the way from Tsargrad1, where we had served the Emperor of the Romans; we had been Varyagi2.

Which meant that I was also no stranger to calling out orders over the din of battle.

But this was no story of exploits in the Emperor’s service, although we had many of those.

No, this one took place on the long way home, through Holmgard3, Novgorod, and across the Baltic Sea to Sweden, barely escaping the clutches of the Jomsvikings, even after the events I was about to relate.

I smoothed my beard and looked around, finding I had the attention of one and all. I was no bard, but I knew I could tell a story. Especially one that I had survived and was true.

“Our adventure began in Tsargrad, several weeks before our service there was done. There we were approached by a madman, such as are common in that great city, although for the most part their madness derives from their fanatical worship of the Crucified God, and they are harmless. But this one was not of their ilk,” I smiled, “not at all.

“ And he was dangerous, and we knew it from the moment we laid eyes on him. But his promises were too enticing for any true Northman to ignore.

“The promise of silver.”

I paused to let it sink in.

“He had come to the City by the Volga route, more remote than that taken by most traders along the Dniepro4.

“But even though he stayed in the Russian Quarter, he was no trader - he was some kind of shaman, and I cannot tell you how he escaped the notice of the Greek guards, excepting maybe in this case he was able to place some glamour5 over their eyes”

This was surely an exaggeration, and he had probably just lied his way past them, claiming to be a relative or companion of such-and-such a trader’s party, before ensconcing himself in the corner hovel in which we found him.

“He had come from farther north than most, from the lands of the Finns and Lapps, where in the depths of winter there is almost no day at all, and in the summer only a scant few hours of night.

“Some place where not even the name of the Crucified God has been uttered, and what gods they do worship are neither ours, and certainly more cruel.”

I noted now that I had the rapt attention of even the children, sitting still in the rush-strewn corners, no longer fidgeting.

The only distracted ones were some of the young warriors, their attention divided between me and the maidens present, some of them warriors themselves. But their attention was on me, especially as neither I nor any of my returning band were yet betrothed. I knew full well that by the time the night was deep, some of them would be beneath or astride some of my men , with betrothals - perhaps - to follow. But not me, I was not ready yet. At least not for betrothal.

“He somehow discovered that I and my men —” (I gestured to my left down the trestle, although everyone knew whom I was talking about. We all had places of honour, myself at the head of the table, with my mother and father to my right.) An enthusiastic cheer was raised, that I waited to be done with before continuing.

“— were taking the journey back north soon, and sent an urchin with a message inviting me and a couple of my men to come and speak with him at his ‘humble abode’ in relation to a matter that would be to our ‘mutual benefit’.

“I took Sveinar and Svargil, and went to meet him. We had to pass through the whole section of Tsargrad set aside for traders from the North -the Rus, or Russians, as they lump us all together as. It is as much a prison as a devoted quarter, for the Greeks keep it under constant watch, and only a few merchants are allowed out at a time, and only under guard.

“We were allowed in, under the pretext of looking up a friend of a friend, and the fact that I outranked any of the guards on duty at the time.

“Nor did I fail to show my appreciation with a couple of gold coins.

“We passed by loads of the furs, pelts and other stuffs that, while familiar to us, were so coveted by the Greeks and other peoples of the south with whom they traded, would fetch fantastic prices. But we realized that the ‘civilizing’ influence of Tsargrad had not left us untouched when we were somewhat taken aback by the sight of a merchant fucking one of his slaves outdoors in broad daylight. He even grunted something and waved to us as we passed.”

There was laughter around the hall (and not a few ale-fueled and lascivious glances, this time exchanged mutually), and I let it die down before continuing.

“At last we came to this … shed is the only way to describe it, set somewhat apart from the other buildings, probably because of the smell of it as much as any other thing.

“It wasn’t big, but it was at least tall; it had to be, to house the man we found inside it, whose rough voice beckoned us in before we had even made our presence known. He surely could not have heard the clinking of our mail over the din of the rest of the quarter at just past midday.

“I posted Sveinar outside; Svargil and I went in.

“There was barely room for the two of us, and I almost sent Svargil back out, but thought better of it, as I preferred having at least one of my men as a witness to whatever this hulking brute wanted.

“The shed itself had only a rough-hewn wooden table, and a couple of benches, from one of which he had arisen, or I could almost say unfolded himself, as he had been hunched over a bowl of something, drinking straight from it.”

I paused to consider how I had delivered this last. Maybe I really had been become accustomed to the more delicate manners of the Greeks.

No, no. This fellow would neither have been welcomed in my father’s hall, at least not without bathing.

“He was the size of a bear, six foot eight if he was an inch, with uncombed, unbraided black hair, well-shot with grey, all the way down to his waist, and a great, bristling beard of the same length. He was near-completely clad in skins, even though the weather was very warm. The parts of his body we could see were also covered in hair. There were some kind of greasy-looking animal - I guess bird - bone and feather talismans or charms, both hanging from his clothing and tied into his beard at random places, with his own hair.

“His only visible weapons were attached to a plain leather belt. On his left side, a small hatchet was tucked into it, but on his right, he had a large sickle-shaped blade, that, despite the squalor around him, appeared to be made of gold.

“He grinned at us as he rose, but it was more like the baring of the teeth of an animal that wants to eat you, his being long, and not only yellow, but also stained with something else.

“He had decorated his abode with the same kinds of talismans as he had adorned himself with, some even hung from the ceiling. It was almost all we could do to keep them out of our faces.

“And the smell of the place was almost every bad one you can imagine combined. Rotten meat, rotten blood, not to mention his unwashed body, to which he seemed to have applied numerous ointments, none of which improved his scent. In fact, I noticed a few open clay jars in one corner, with big, fat, bloated black flies circling lazily around them.

“And his eyes - they were blood and bile-shot, with either no irises, unless they were black, or the size of his pupils just obliterated them.

“He reached out a paw for me to clasp, which I did to avoid offending him, but thanking both Odin and the Crucified Christ-God that I was wearing my mailed gloves. (Svargil wisely kept his thumbs hooked in his belt.)

“His voice, like his laugh, boomed when he spoke.”

I tried to imitate it for my audience.

“‘I am called Bolshii Medved!’”

I suppose my storytelling abilities did not extend to successful imitations, at least not of him, as instead of rapt silence, or even gasps, I was instead rewarded with a scattering of laughter.

I bit my lip and continued, “He said that that was what the Rus of Novgorod and Staraya Ladoga called him, and it means, ‘The bigger bear.’”

After a pause to let that sink in, during which I looked around the hall, making brief eye contact with most of the company to see that I had their attention back, I continued.

“It suited him. He completely filled his half of the structure, although neither Svargil nor I had much room to move in either. He offered us mead, which we politely declined, lying and saying that we were due to go on duty as soon as we returned to the Palace, to guard the Emperor’s person. I still shudder to think what vessels he proposed to serve us in.

“He did not invite us to sit; I think even he realized that that would have been too awkward. To our relief, he got straight to the point. That is, after taking an enormous gulp from a wineskin that had been sitting on the floor, amidst what mostly looked to be garbage.

“There was a barrow-grave. like those that many others like us have found hidden in the forests along the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea, left by some forgotten race, but often filled with silver.”

I paused to take a deep breath and an even deeper swallow of ale, and allowing one of the maidens to refill my tankard. I nodded my thanks and more; she was no servant, but rather the niece of a nearby chieftain. Had I been ready to wed, I knew it would have been to her I would have proposed. Yet I had a feeling that she might beat me to it, and I would not be able to deny her.

“We all know the tales of those haunted forests filled with hidden silver. Yes, it’s grave-robbery, but it is not for the faint of heart. How ancient these tombs are is anybody’s guess, but it has to be centuries. Whatever gods their makers thought protected them have either long since vanished along with those who worshipped them, or else they were false gods who never were, their very names unknown today.

“Yet many an adventurer has entered those forests never to return.

“But this ‘Bigger Bear’ was asking us to go farther - much farther - to the northeast than our planned route home would have. Into the lands of the Finns or Lapps, or whoever claims those wastes as their ancestral territories.

“And I believe that although he claimed to be of them, it was them he was afraid, as he asserted, rather than anything that haunted the barrow.

“He did not make it very clear whether it was a site they held sacred, or whether it was one they feared, but only that they would be very wrathful with anyone who interfered with it, which was why he needed a band of seasoned fighting men.”

I looked all around the hall, and then to my left, nodding at my remaining comrades. “And that, you can have no doubt, we were.”

The cheer I expected went up; every tankard was raised, and everyone drank.

“I should have questioned him more closely regarding why this grave was so important to him. But I guess the lure of the silver he promised we would find enticed me as much as it would have any other man of Viking blood. Svargil is my witness to the booty he described.

“Whoever had been entombed there had been well-provided for whatever afterlife he had expected. Not only would we find all manner of plate, armour and weapons with bejeweled hilts and all the rest, but horses and young warriors had been sacrificed to accompany him as his escort, and young maidens to wait upon his table and warm whatever kind of bed he expected.

“So it would be a haunted place for certain, filled with the bones of many who probably died screaming for mercy.

“But all the treasure was ours, saving only the one item he wanted us to retrieve for him.

“There was a book - clearly he believed it to be magical - and there would be no mistaking it, as there would be no other books. And it would stand out by its magnificence anyway. Its’ covers and clasps would be gold, and set with delicately-carved ivories, and the contents of it were priceless to him.

“Now I am not a greedy man. At least not as greedy as most of you.”

The hall exploded with a roar of laughter, and quite a few rough, but good-natured responses, which I acknowledged with nods and the grim smile I allowed myself in that moment.

“I had served years in Tsargrad, as had most of the men who came to be in what I thought of as my war-band. Those whom, in the structure of the Greek army, I was in charge of. We had all been paid well for our services, and had received additional gifts of gold after successes in battle, and sometimes on the Christ-God’s feast-days. And once, upon the accession of a new Emperor to the throne.”

“I had squandered less than some on dice and other things, but not one of us was coming home anything close to empty-handed. And the Emperor made sure of this by having the het - hetair—6 an official furnish each of us with yet another purse of gold just before we set out.

“And because of my previous promotion, I had been being paid almost double what each of my men had. And even though the hunt for silver and gold is in the blood of every Viking, I had no need of any more. But I wanted it for my men, and in fact, as I swear before the One-Eyed God7, I secretly resolved that I would divide my own share among my war-band, keeping none for myself.”

I felt pride in the quick squeeze my mother gave my forearm when I said this.

“But neither liking nor certainly trusting this disgusting brute of a shaman, I asked him plainly what his intentions were regarding this book.

“He told me a story of a curse that had been put upon his family generations ago, that the eldest son of each would be deformed, as he said he was, and covered in hair like an animal, so that even if he shaved it all off in the evening, in the morning he would wake to find it all back. And furthermore, that he could produce neither son nor daughter, no matter how many women he mounted, and the next generation’s carrier of the curse would be his eldest sister’s son. This book, which apparently had been written by the court physician of King Herod of the Jews, and was therefore older than the Christ-God’s faith, contained the spell that would release his lineage from this burden.

“Now maybe it should have worried me more, because I have guarded precincts of the Palace to which I have refused many admission, not accepting whatever they gave as their excuse for being there was. I knew he was lying, about at least part, if not all of it.”

I sighed and took a long draught of ale, none of it for any dramatic effect.

“But I chose to accept his offer,” (I did not mention that Svargil had supported me in this, although with guarded enthusiasm) “so I must also accept responsibility for all that followed after.

“I cannot honestly tell you whether I was really only thinking of my men, or if it was to have one more adventure on the way home, one more great tale to tell.

“As though we hadn’t enough already.

“And of course he told us we had nothing to fear from the tomb itself, nor even the book, so long as we didn’t open it; as that was only safe for an experienced magician. It was the wrath of the locals that he was afraid of, and why he needed us.

“Whatever his real plans for this spell-book, it was this last part that I believed.

“He was setting out before we were, and said that he would be waiting for us at an appointed place. He gave us detailed directions, and landmarks, which would bring us close to the shore of a lake whose name I could not pronounce.

“So long as we found the lake, he would find us. When I asked, he told me that the forest itself would tell him of our impending arrival, and bring him to us.”

I shook my head.

“This should have worried me more.”

“You weren’t alone in that shithouse,” Svargil piped in, earning himself some disapproving stares. Interrupting the telling of a tale is not well looked-upon. But he meant well, and I acknowledged my thanks with a nod, yet nevertheless went on:

“But the final decision was mine. And I should have asked that bloody shaman a lot more questions.”

Svargil: “Which he would only have answered with more lies.”

Me: “But I didn’t.”

“And even when we saw what we did in the first chamber of that tomb, I could— should have just turned it around, but didn’t.”

I swallowed half of my tankard, and took a moment to gather my thoughts before going on.

No one made a sound; they just waited for me to continue. They were not just being respectful; I had their full attention. (There was one young mother trying to suckle her newborn, and having some trouble keeping him quiet. An older woman had gone to her assistance.)

I surprised myself by saying:

“Perhaps the manners of the Greeks have worn off on me some after all this time. But mark my words, they are fearsome soldiers when it comes to it - the ones who take up soldiering as their trade, anyway - just as we are. But they are different in other things. So:

“Now would be the time to take any of the smaller children out of earshot, if you wish.”

No one did. I wasn’t surprised. But I had warned them. Something I never would have thought of doing before my years in Tsargrad.

“So one day, just as night was descending, we came to the appointed place. And though I thought we had all learned our woodcraft pretty well from the days of our youth, he stepped right out of them from the same direction we had, and only minutes after, as though he had been following right behind us.

“It may have just been a trick of the twilight, but he not only looked even bigger than before - although that could have been due to the extra furs he was wearing against the cold - but it seemed as though the hair on his clothing blended right into the hair of his body without interruption. Over the top of his head, crowning the hood of his cloak, was that of a huge wolf, with jaws intact and hanging open, exposing ferocious teeth, the largest near the length of a man’s finger.” I held up a slightly crooked index one to illustrate.

“And polished black stones to replace the eyes - though of what type I know not, and I’ll admit I found them disturbing - especially on him - because what light there was they didn’t seem to reflect, but rather suck in.

“He immediately noted that we were now only ten, counting me. (As if he hadn’t already while following us - or ‘the forest’ or some bird not told him.)

“I had left Tsargrad with ten men, but the younger Egils, as you all already know, took ill with a fever in Novgorod, and passed from this world.” I closed my eyes for a moment.

“He is a great loss to his kin. I should tell you that on his deathbed he accepted the Christ— the Crucified God and His sacraments, from one of their priests.”

At this, there was a rumble of surprised muttering, which I did not let stop me, but rather battered down with the strength of my own voice.

“I do not know everything about this Christ, but the Greeks seem to be doing well while in his favour!”

The hall settled again, allowing me to continue.

“And for all I know - hells, from what I have heard, if - if this Christ - or Christian god as they call him - is real, then Egils has gone to a better afterlife than our gods would have granted him.”8

I finished my tankard, and used the back of my hand to wipe my lips, then nodded, mostly to myself. I smoothed my beard again as my vessel was refilled, and my audience waited.

Perhaps I wasn’t such a great storyteller after all; maybe I just had the voice.

But this was no story, it was the truth. And everyone knew the men to my left did not add up to nine.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that my mother could sense my moment of weakness, and began moving to put a hand on my arm. But she stopped as I resumed.

“He led us right back into the trees, away from the lake, on which the ice was just breaking up. The incline was steep; the lake had almost nothing in the way of a beach, only five or six feet of stony shingle at the foot of the shoulder-high granite cliffs that marked the abrupt end of the woods. Which we were now off the path and into.

“But after a little while, we came to a kind of narrow clearing, from which another ridge of granite was upthrust, although it was partially covered by stones that had tumbled down from somewhere above.

“Or been moved there.

“Our guide pushed aside one particularly large boulder, with almost no visible effort.

“A hole or tunnel into the hillside was revealed, to which he beckoned us.

“‘There?’ I asked him, and he responded that after crawling through a short tunnel, we would emerge into the tomb, which had been built out of an already existing cavern. There would be an antechamber, where we would find the bones of the sacrificed servants and animals, and where we could collect all manner of silver flagons, plate, jewelry, and so forth, so long as we were willing to pick through the bones of the dead. At the other side of it, there would be another rock that needed to be rolled aside to open the ancient chieftain’s sepulcher.

“Once inside, we were to touch nothing else, but only find the book of which he had spoken.

“We already had torches lit, although they would soon have been unnecessary outside, as a full moon was coming up. I decided that myself, Sveinar, Torvald, the elder Egils, and Nicholas would go in with torches, while my remaining men would remain outside, on guard - and keeping an eye on Bolshii Medved, who was looking more than ever like what he was named for.

“To fit through the tunnel - which our guide would have been unable to - we had to shed our heavy cloaks, and left our swords behind, as they would have been cumbersome. Each of us kept an axe tucked in his belt, save Nicholas, who kept four knives, two strapped to his back just over his shoulder, and one on each hip, due to his proficiency at throwing them. We each also carried a rolled-up sack tied to our belts, to collect the treasures we had been promised.

“I took the lead, torch in my left hand, my right empty so I could easily crawl on my elbows, and with a sheathed dagger in my teeth, hilt to my right, so I could pull it fast if need be.”

I paused for a moment before adding, “I don’t think any of us Norsemen really like enclosed spaces; the fjords and plains and the open sea are our domains. So I am not ashamed to tell you that I was biting down so hard that that sheath will forever bear the marks of my teeth.”

A ripple of laughter flowed across the hall, but it was subdued; I had them in the tension of the story now.

I took a drink, and went on.

“The tunnel was thankfully short, only about ten feet, at a pretty steep downward angle. It opened into a large cavern, just as the Medved had told us, easily big enough for us to stand up in, with several feet to spare. And big enough that even if we spread out, all of our torches wouldn’t quite light up the darkness of the corners completely.

“I probably shouldn’t really say ‘corners’, because the chamber was roughly oval in shape.

“And there were bones. We could pick pathways between them, but still had to gently kick a few out of our way. I’m sure they all added up to complete skeletons, but they had not been decently left to rest whole, and had rather been haphazardly mingled together, many broken. By the count of visible skulls, there had been at least thirty. And the skulls of four horses.

“The play of light and shadows cast by our torches, combined with all those bones, was enough to unnerve anyone, no matter how many times they had seen the front line of battle. And the curling smoke, gathering along the ceiling. But I began to get that terrible sinking feeling in my stomach. Because you know what wasn’t there?

“No glint of silver, nor gems of any kind. Just the desecrated remains of the dead.

“And it suddenly struck me full-force what was wrong about those. In that climate, they should have frozen, shriveled - they should have mummified - not rotted away.

“A closer inspection solved this mystery, though not to our relief. The bones everywhere bore the marks of cuts and scraping. Not the single or double thrust of a clean kill. This had been butcher’s work. And there were parts, especially the ends of some, that were charred.

“We said nothing aloud; we all knew what we were seeing, and the looks we exchanged were enough.

“And it got worse. as we inspected the walls, the torches revealed more. Make no mistake, we are hard men, Vikings and Varyagi. But I think every one of us just wanted out of that haunted place, and any one of us alone might have fled. I cannot swear that I myself might not have. But as always, we took strength from each other, our battle-brothers.

“There were drawings on the walls, mostly crudely-painted stick-figures and animals at first, the scenes pretty much duplicated, one across the cavern from the other.

“They were painted in what seemed in the torchlight to be a rusty ochre shade we were all too familiar with - that of dried blood. Close to one wall there were even the shards of a broken clay pot the painter must have accidentally dropped or knocked over. A rust-red stain had spread around it, and on one edge someone had stepped into it with a bare foot, and a half-set of partial human footprints led away for about ten paces, each more faded than the last, until they disappeared.

“We had no way of being certain that it was blood, nor especially that it was human blood, but we each knew in our guts that that was surely an ingredient in the mixture.

“There seemed to be a progressive set of scenes, meant to tell some awful story.

“It started out with hunters with bows and spears pursuing some large antlered beast. Then, I would guess the same hunters carrying off their successful kill.

“But next, the hunters were all knelling and bowing, while one of them presented the dripping head of their kill - and the painter had made sure to portray the blood - to another stick-figure, but one at least three times the size of the others, and with a gigantic set of antlers of his own, but set upon an oval - and by this I guess they meant human-shaped - head. And this figure, who had to have been some god to them, was drawn on a level where his feet were just above that of their heads.

“The last was the worst, even to us whose grandfathers had told tales of human sacrifice amongst us. There was a gathering of them around what was certainly a fire. Above them again was this same figure, now holding out some kind of giant sickle in one hand, the other reaching towards an obviously female figure, who was offering up to him a child - a newborn babe, most like, as the painter had taken the care of showing the slight bump in her stomach that new mothers take a little time to lose. And just underneath the hand that was to receive the baby, one of the male figures held up a great bowl.

“To receive the sacrificed newborn’s blood.”

I took a healthy slug of ale.

“This was no southern god of compassion; this was a grim deity of the Old North, who I can only pray even unto our own stern gods has faded away into the mists of time and been forgotten.”

There was silence in the hall. I licked my lips before continuing.

“I cannot deny that we were shaken, every one of us. Surrounded by all that we were, in this frozen hell this madman had brought us to. But we had a job to finish. And if there was silver, it had to be in the next chamber. Unless the fucker had lied to us.

“We took up positions, preparing to face we knew not what, and the next stone was rolled aside.

“All that confronted us was the smell of stale air. I left Egils and Torvald outside to ensure that the boulder would not, by some trickery, roll back into place and entomb us.

“I stepped through, accompanied by Nicholas and Sveinar. This chamber was much smaller, not even a fifth the size of the main one. Sort of like a side-chapel in one of the great churches of Tsargrad or Holmgard.

“It was empty, and (by ours or the Christ-God’s mercy) undecorated, except for two - very important - things.”

I drank again, and went on as my tankard was refilled.

“On the floor of the chamber was laid out the complete skeleton of a man. Every bone was present and accounted for, as far as we, not being healers, could tell. And it was the skeleton of a large man, but still, a normal man.

“But it was drawn up on the floor to take up more space than it should have. No bone touched the next, there was in every case space between them, to the point where a foot separated the bones of the upper and lower arms where the elbow joints should have been.

“And we almost went straight on to the next thing, had I not caught a glint of light out of the corner of my eye as we passed by. Inside the rib cage, but not touching any bone, was an oval rock, about the size of my palm, polished to perfection, and it turned out, inlaid with - silver! - all around in some intricate geometrical pattern.

“Without even thinking about it, I picked it up. As I did, I thought I felt the slightest tremor through the ground, causing the bones to shift just not even a hairsbreadth. I held my breath for a couple of heartbeats, but it did not recur, and looking between my companions, I could tell they had felt nothing. It had to have just been my nerves, I thought, and my growing rage at Bolshii Medved.

“I took off my glove to examine it more closely, and noted that it felt even colder to the touch than I would have expected.

“My companions only shook their heads and muttered comments to the effect that that was the only silver we would find. I slipped it into a small pouch on my belt, and we moved on.

“At the rear of the chamber, there was a step up to a higher platform, with what appeared very much like the pulpit of a Christian church. Just like in those, the top of this stone pulpit was angled down towards whoever would stand behind it. And, lust as in the ones I have seen, there was a lip at the bottom to hold a book that could thus be read from while leaving the hands free.

“And there was a book, but it was surely no Bible.

“But it was the book that that shaman had sent us for, and one, I resolved, he was going to have to pay for if he wanted to get it.

“I was only going to take a very quick look at it, as I was beginning - more than beginning - to feel that we had been used, and had walked into some type of trap.

“It lay closed, and was thin, but sumptuously decorated. The binding was plush, purple velvet, rimmed and clasped with gold, and the outside edges of the pages were gold too. In each of the four corners was an ivory oval, carved with a different geometric pattern.

“Momentarily forgetting the shaman’s warning - which I not even half-believed by now anyway, and was more interested in the book’s true material value - I quickly opened it to a random page, to see if there were any illuminations.9 But at first all I saw was a blank page.

“And then my body was seized by a sudden convulsion, as letters or symbols appeared on the page where my still ungloved hand touched it, in both gold and that same dried-blood red we had seen on the walls of the outer chamber. In my brief view of them, they looked like variations on simple symbols, crude compared to other writing I have seen.

“But my head jerked up, my eyes staring at the empty ceiling.

“My voice, louder than I could ever have believed, that I could barely recognize as my own, intoned words that are burned into my memory: ‘YAZ GLAGOLYU—’10

“I thought I felt another tremor, and my men in the cavern all later acknowledged that they though they had felt it too, but had all put it down to nerves and over-active imaginations.

“Sveinar had slapped my hand away from the book, and snapped it shut.

“I immediately sagged, looking down just in time to see the ghost of a symbol appear on the cover of the book, or I should better say hovering just above it for a mere heartbeat before fading away into nothingness.

“‘God’s Mother….’ Sveinar had muttered, and I knew he had seen it too. I do not even now want to guess at what horror he had saved me from.” I exchanged a glance and a nod of thanks with him. He was seated directly to my right, and I grasped his shoulder for an instant before I went on.

“We had both seen the figure of a star, that much we knew, but neither of us could later say whether it was a pentacle - with five points - or if it had six points, or seven, or even eight. But I responded to Sveinar that whatever we had seen, it had no connection to the Christ-God’s mother, Mary the Virgin, nor Freya, the princess of our gods.

“If the shaman wanted this book, he could have it. I took the sack I had brought, covered the unholy thing with it, and carefully dropped it in without touching it, tying the sack as tightly as I could. Sveinar and I exchanged a look, and then said in unison: ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’

“That we did, and were shortly outside with the rest of my men.

“Of Bolshii Medved, there was no sign. He had said something about thinking he had seen something, or someone some distance through the trees, farther - he said - than he knew my men could discern, and said he was going to investigate, because our - his - enemies could now be following us. He had refused accompaniment, claiming that he he could be faster and more stealthy on his own.

“I was actually a little relieved at that; despite my considerable unease at not knowing where the bugger was, I was thankful not to have to worry about one of my men being alone with him. Anyway, I had his - I think literally - gods-damned book.

“We all knew he could be bringing back an ambush. Rudrig, who had a bow, had already concealed himself amongst the trees above the ridge. Torvald joined him. Nicholas, with his throwing-knives, hid as best he could in the trees nearest us.

“Ambush-warfare was one thing we had not trained for in the Emperor’s Guard, and even the men who had bows had not used them for more than hunting and target-shooting for years.”

I smiled quickly, and took a pull of ale.

“We had allowed some of the skills of our youth, gained amongst you, our kin, to get a little rusty.

“We would wait a short while, and if he didn’t return, we would begin to make for home. He could catch up or get word to us if his powers were as he claimed.

“We waited. At least an hour, maybe two.

“The full moon was completely up; visibility was good. The trees were still bare, only casting grasping shadows in the general direction we had to take. We would get back to the path our lost guide had brought us to that accursed cave by, and then return to the coast, by which we would eventually find a place where we could take ship across the Baltic Sea home.

“We knew the visibility worked both for and against us. Against, because it rendered us easily seen by anyone looking in the right place, but on the other side of the coin, we could more easily see where we were going, and without the use of torches, which would have made us really easy targets.

“We decided to cut back to our original path by the narrow, but navigable ridgeline, rather than going back down to the lakeshore, at least partly because we did not want to be trapped and surrounded with our backs to the water.

“I put Harald in the lead, with Nicholas behind him, then Magnus and Egils, who had untied our pack horses, swaddled in blankets as they were, led the snorting, shivering beasts next. Then followed Sveinar and Svargil, and then our two archers, Rudrig and Torvald, with myself as rearguard.

“We - I - chose this order because I thought if an attack came, it would come from the east or southeast, which would put me in the front. And I wanted Rudrig and Torvald to get a couple of arrows away before they discarded their bows in favour of their shields and swords. I had unslung my own shield from our baggage, Sveinar and Svargil also had theirs on their arms now, as did Magnus and Egils. Only Harald and Nicholas had none, and I believed that if need be, we could protect them by the wall we would form. And a wall we could form, with the Greek type of shields you have all already seen, that can cover three-quarters of your body, and easily interlock with that of the man beside you, or be raised if you are in the second line to protect you and your fellows from above.

“We - we Northmen - have often used that tactic in battle too, but it works better with the Greek shields - and they call it ‘the tortoise’.

“If it came to it, we would continue to retreat. If they wanted to kill us, they would have to do it up close, hand-to-hand.” Against the best fighters in the world, I thought best not to add out loud.

“So we moved. But - and the blame now falls upon me for this, I was leader and made the decisions - whoever exactly our enemy really was had predicted this. Perhaps it was even that gods-damned Medved himself. We had not counted on their perfidy. Or at least the level of it.”

I took a long, deep breath, shaking a little. “I had not counted on it - his nor theirs.”

I reached for my ale again, but stopped myself. I felt a familiar female hand squeeze my shoulder, and I grasped it quickly before going on.

“It was not a quarter of an hour before their trap was sprung.”

I sighed again, and my audience waited.

“Anyone who joins the Emperor’s personal guard - the Varyagi - is already a battle-tested warrior, even if young. But some skills dull without practice, and when your duties are either patrolling the Palace precincts, or being the Emperor’s personal bodyguards on campaign, you’re not really called upon to do any scouting. There are others whose specific duty that is, and they are good at it. Very good at it.

“So perhaps we could have been more careful, although we thought that we were. Maybe I should have told my men to be more observant, to look for things out of place. Maybe I should have taken the lead.”

I shook my head, supporting it with both hands, but looking at the kin of the men everyone knew I was talking about.

“I’m sorry,” I said directly to them. “I thought the danger would be coming from behind us - and it was - but I should have given more thought to their laying traps for us.

“The entire path had deadfall on it; fallen branches and dead leaves still frozen to the ground, but I guess with also checking straight ahead and other directions for attackers, Harald did not notice that one patch of ground had a little too much.

“There were cries of surprise and pain from the front, quickly cut off, followed by enraged cursing.

“A pit had been dug, and carefully covered over. The kind one digs for animals, with sharpened spear points at the bottom, and about six feet deep.

“Harald was killed instantly, his mail could not protect him from the full force of his fall. And even had it, some evil fate had one hit him directly in the face and come out the back of his head.

“The curses I still heard came primarily from Nicholas, who had been sufficiently nimble to try to catch Harald, but not enough to avoid slipping in himself. But he had grabbed the edge while falling, and had managed to slide down the side of the pit, where he was only pierced through the side of the right calf through his boot by one of the blades, where no armour protected him, but also missed being run through the chest by a hairsbreadth by another, which actually pierced his mail through back and front (he had landed face-up), at least temporarily trapping him. We actually saw later that a third spear-point had broken beneath his back. It must not have been perfectly straight, or had shifted over time.”

I now looked around at all my listeners again. “I say ‘over time’, because the ground was still too frozen for them to have easily dug that pit. They must have done it the previous season.

“And then the arrows came, from the direction we had thought they would. We had no problem with the shafts; this was hardly a set of timed volleys from a couple of thousand Turkish horse-archers on the move, who might as well have been born in the saddle.

“Yes, we’d faced and overcome that.

“We tortoised up pretty quickly; but only Rudrig got away one shaft at something he thought he saw move, but otherwise our attackers remained hidden to us. These Lapps, or whatever the hell they call themselves, are crafty little buggers. We made to protect our horses, and past them, Nicholas trapped in the pit.

But to only partial avail. The pack horses, not being trained for war, panicked and reared, and it was all we could do to avoid having our ribs or heads staved in by flailing hooves, as neither Magnus nor Egils was able to hang onto their reins. They bolted, and the first one tried to jump the pit, but didn’t make it over the far side, and slid back in, kicking and neighing in terror, and then agony, landing right on top of Harald, to ultimately share his fate. But the horse did not die instantly, and its screams were the backdrop to the events of the next few minutes.

“The other horse, blessed of some god, tried the same leap, and its’ hind legs also failed to clear the far side, but I think it climbed up by having landed with its’ rear hooves on its’ fellow, and trampling the other beast even harder down onto the blades.”

I took a swallow.

“That horse ran some distance, but we recovered it later.

“We backed up, and Torvald removed his shield, throwing it into the pit, shouting for Nicholas to protect himself with it. The rest of us surrounded him.

“More arrows came, but they were haphazard, and not shot in unison, nor any particular sequence, and still came directly from the east and northeast. None of the arrows got through to do any damage, nor did they unduly encumber our shields, as they hardly came in a hurricane, and we were able to pull out, or at least break off the shafts - which were of a very poor quality - almost right after they struck. If their plan was to back us into the pit without engaging, it wouldn’t have worked; there was still enough path on the outside of the ridgeline for us to back around it. They had had to leave space on both sides to dig and cover it.

“Regardless, as we took cover from their darts—” I shook my head. “Darts— fuck, I’m starting to sound like a Greek, I’ve heard so many of their tales.

“Shortly after they had begun shooting, I thought I felt the ground tremble again. And as will shortly be clear, I was not imagining it. But there was no time to speak of it with my brothers, as the real attack then came.

“While I was expecting something of the kind, I’ll give the bastards this, they had stealth, the kind of woodcraft that needed no more than fallen trees and lumps of earth even in the leafless spring. And under the light of a full moon.

“The only warning we had was the couple of heartbeats during which the arrows completely stopped, in order to avoid hitting their own men. Some were also probably slinging or discarding their bows to participate in the attack.

“And then of course it came, from both above and below us, skin-clad, dark-skinned tribesmen, some of whom leapt onto the path, so we were at least momentarily beset from three sides.

They threw some of their short spears like javelins, but only a couple found chainmail, and no more. Those who pressed into us had as little success, as our shields were able to turn their spears easily, and our swords to not only turn them, but sometimes even cut them in half. They were actually somewhat pathetic weapons, perhaps suitable for hunting, but not war, at least not our kind. They were no match for Damascus steel.

“But their other weapons were better, once they decided, after the loss of several of their lives and limbs, to give up trying to poke us with their spears. They all had small shields, slightly larger than the kind usually called a buckler, and small iron axes, and in some cases sickle-like blades that I immediately realized reminded me of those disgusting paintings in the cave.

“They tried to hack down our shields and force us back into each other, but we stood firm, and every time one of us saw a chance, he’d open the shield-wall a sliver (if not smash his shield directly into the pygmy - because that’s what they reminded me of - in front of him), and stab or chop out with either sword or axe, almost every time killing or mortally wounding one of them.

“But one of these devils, still carrying a bow, snuck around us to the side of the pit where Nicholas was still trapped on his back, struggling to get free. He began to shoot arrows directly down at Nicholas from less than the six-foot depth of the pit away. Ragnar, who was closest, but too heavily engaged to help, said he saw the swarthy bastard shoot at least six times, before putting an arrow into our man’s exposed left shoulder, hampering his ability to move his borrowed shield, and then into his left side, surely puncturing his lung. At that range, mail was no protection against a direct hit from even one of those arrows.”

I now singled out Nicholas’ mother and sister, both widows.

“But Nicholas now feasts in Valhalla with his father, I promise you. Torvald had tried to throw an axe at the bastard, but missed because he was trying to throw around Ragnar’s back. He then jumped out from behind our protection, and was trying to get around the upper side of the pit to get at Nicholas’ tormentor, but it was too late. Yet even after the fatal shot both Ragnar and Torvald saw hit him, Nicholas was able to free his right arm to reach behind his back and get hold of one of his throwing-knives, and put it dead-centre into his killer’s throat. The Lapp first fell to his knees, gurgling, and then pitched right over into the pit across Nicholas, who surely had lived at least long enough to see that he had avenged his own death.

“We stood strong, only giving back by inches, but smaller as they were than us, there were enough of them that they would have eventually overwhelmed us. Yet I swear before all of our gods that we would have sold our lives very dearly, and even as it stood then, I believe they had paid fourfold or more for the lives of Harald and Nicholas.

“But we suddenly heard other shrill whoops and cries, like theirs, but not quite. And just like that, they pulled away from us, and melted back into the woods. But now there were arrows coming again, but at them, not at us, and we could see their shafts being shot back at whatever blood-enemy of theirs had attacked from their rear while they were busy with us.

“It had to be some enemy clan of these same Lapps, as the arrows and other weapons we later saw were of the same types, and we did get to catch a glimpse of them in the distance, as they charged at each other, no longer making any attempt at stealth, but shrieking strange, high-pitched war-cries.

“But this battle was to be short-lived.

“While others continued to fight, the shouts of those closest to us turned to ones of terror.

“In the distance, as far as I could see, that gods-damned shaman Bolshii Medved had appeared.

“In the full moonlight, we could tell it was him from even that distance, with his furs and his wolf’s-head hood, as he uttered a blood-curdling, bestial roar, and began to run towards us, but without any apparent weapon in hand.

“And what came next, we still can’t all agree on. As for me, I thought I blinked, and missed seeing him stumble - but he hadn’t stumbled, as he was now running at us on all fours, and even when I blinked again to clear my vision, he was impossibly closer, the hood having completely fallen over his face, yet not seeming to obstruct his vision, as he came straight at us along the ridgeline, at an almost impossible speed. He looked to me like - never mind wolf - a charging bear.

“Egils and Torvald had picked up fallen spears, and it was never so well as on that night that we had fought together for so long, as I began to bark commands to form up in a double line to face him, four in front, and Egils and Torvald behind to both brace us, and to do what they could over the top of us or between us with those barely adequate weapons

But then he was right in front of us, like I had somehow been put in some partial trance, and had again blinked long and over again, because at first he was twenty feet away, then ten, then right on us, charging through and knocking us aside as though we were no more than children’s toys.

“And then he was through us, and as the gods are my witness, I felt it - knocked backwards headlong - but I didn’t see it.

“As I rolled up to my feet, shield in front of me and sword in hand, my fellows each doing a version of the same, he was now on the other side of us, standing taller than I would have thought even him capable. He looked, for all my soul, more like the bear he was named for than a man, even the wolf’s head that had fallen over his face seemed to have disappeared, or maybe changed into something like a bear. I couldn’t see his face, so I don’t know how he could see.”

In a corner of the hall, a silver-bearded old war-band leader muttered something.

“I’m sorry,” I said, sucking in my breath, mildly irritated at the interruption, “What was that?” Before I even finished, I felt my mother’s hand on my wrist.

The old man, who sat as straight up on the bench as he would have had he been of twenty winters instead of almost seventy, cleared his throat. He then repeated himself, his voice low, but filling the hall just as mine had.

“‘Vseslav Volk’11. Vseslav of Polotsk.”

There was a brief silence as the words hung in the air, while I tried to find a reply, trying to remember the old tale.

“Vseslav— Vseslav the Wolf?” I tried to buy time.

The old man shook his head, and his grandchildren - grown men and women - looked at him with concern.

“No. Vseslav the Were-wolf. A Rus prince - a Russian prince of Polotsk who was born during an eclipse with a caul over his head. He could change his shape into that of a wolf on the night of a full moon, or under any eclipse, and he would journey all the way from Polotsk to Holmgard and back again in a single night.”

“Oh, for the sake of the Christ—” Torvald blurted out.

“Have you been among the Greeks so long that you forsake our gods, boy?” The old warrior’s voice cracked like a whip, and Torvald reacted as though he had been slapped. I actually knew that Torvald had thought much on the matter, and had come very close to being baptised in Tsargrad.

He slapped his hand down on the table. “And with all respect, sir, would anyone here challenge or doubt my right to choose that?”

The old man made to speak again, as did someone else, but Torvald was going to be heard. “You, greybeard, are an honoured chieftain in your own right, and the veteran of many battles, are you not?”

“Aye, boy, all know it.” There was a murmur of assent in the hall.

“Then what fucking sense does it make that you would suffer for not having been killed in battle, because you were better than anyone who fought you? That if you die in the bed where your wife and you your noble children made, you go not to feast and fight in Valhalla, but to wander in some land of endless twilight? When with the Christ-God, if you were a good man, you join him in Paradise, regardless of by what chance you die?”

The man Torvald had rightly called a chieftain only shook his head and replied, “I only know what my parents believed, and theirs before them. Noone would challenge you your right to your Christ-God, boy, you have have fought battles and served as a Varyag in Tsargrad—”

“He’s not my Christ-God!” Torvald cut in.

“So you’ve not forsaken our gods?”

Torvald sighed. “After what you just heard we saw … what you said—.” He swallowed some ale. “And what we were yet to see….”

Most eyes in the hall now returned to me. But the old chieftain - with wisdom - decided to lighten the atmosphere a little.

“Just so you know, one of my noble children was made in the boatyard.”

There was some laughter, but after it died away, it was my mother’s voice that cut through the hall. “All right.” She tapped my forearm again, but hard. “Finish your account. There will be no further interruptions.”

My mother had not been some closeted maiden, my father had chosen her because she herself was no stranger to the bloody fields that draw ravens to blacken the very sky, nor the foaming sea that swallows the cries of drowning men and women.

Nothing had been given voice to that was strange to any of us. We had all heard the old tales of shape-shifters - and if a wolf, why not a bear? It wasn’t as though he hadn’t halfway resembled one already.

I went on:

“But if he was going to be a bear, then we were going to fight him as one.”

“Shields up, and spears from the back rank, we were going to try to force him into his own pit. As he reared up in front of us, roaring, probably expecting us to turn tail and flee, we re-formed and advanced without a word of command from me required, we were so accustomed to working as a unit.

“He was not prepared for this, and took a spear, thrown hard, into the meat of his left shoulder. and I, in the lead, lowered my own shield enough for an instant to take a backhand slash at his eyes. I wasn’t successful, as he stumbled back, but the tip of my blade just caught what I still thought was only the hood that had fallen over his face, just above the nose.

“But he roared in pain and rage at both hits, as mine had actually opened his forehead (perhaps I had cut deeper than I had thought), and blood was pouring into his eyes. He used his right forearm to wipe his eyes as a man would, and also grabbed the shaft of the spear stuck in his shoulder and broke it off.

“I didn’t know about the rest of my men, but I noticed that the nails on his hands appeared longer than they had a few hours ago.”

“We moved forward in lockstep, our shields forming a single solid wall, to force him back. But he dropped to all fours, and charged at us again with such force that he broke through the middle of us, a couple of us taking swings that found only empty air, and again, in what seemed the blink of an eye, was some ten, then twenty feet behind us, as we regrouped to face him again. We took several paces towards him and away from the pit so as to avoid being pushed into it ourselves.

“I know I keep saying ‘the blink of an eye’, but that’s what it was like; it was unbelievable to me how fast he could move, literally he was here, and then he was there.

“But right then - and if anything I’ve said so far sounds beyond belief - then we heard loud snaps and thunderous cracks, followed by what sounded like a building collapsing or a landside.

“Bolshii Medved, rather than attacking us again, seemed frozen to the spot, as did we.

“Then we heard a tremendous roar that we could tell were words, but in no language we understood.

“And then the night exploded with lightning, but not from the sky - from the ground up.”

“There was one gigantic flash from back up the ridgeline whence we had come, and then another that cracked and sizzled, but immediately separated into dozens of pieces of what we call ‘ball lightning’, that skips and moves across rather than down.

“And quickly these balls went, bouncing, at least I thought, on their way, yet set no trees on fire. But not one missed its’ clearly intended target, as we could tell from the screams.

“Wherever they struck, they revealed the hiding places of the first group of Lapps that had attacked us, and a man leapt up ablaze, running until he dropped and was consumed. Some tried to run for the lake, but none made it. Yet others tried to drop and roll to extinguish the flames, but without the slightest success. This was no ordinary fire.”

“It touched only those of the first group, who had attacked us. The other group was running for it, although they apparently had nothing to fear.

“And in each spot where a tribesman was consumed, leaving not even bones, the unnatural flames guttered out immediately, not singing so much as a single branch.

“The ground shook with what sounded like - and turned out to be -thunderous footsteps coming our way.

“At that, although again I missed it, Bolshii Medved once again appeared as his normal - if that word could even have been applied to him - self. Noone else caught it either, but a couple of my men did see the bear-man at first move to flee, and then seem to give up on it.

“Although I had of course tried to keep an eye on him, my gaze had become fixed on the ridgeline’s slight bend ahead (or back), waiting, barely able to breathe, to see what was coming around it. I knew to a certainty in my heart that what we had heard first was that accursed tomb exploding, being rent apart from the inside.

“Our actions had loosed something that had been bound there.

“I didn’t have to wait for him to clear the bend as he strode towards us. I could easily see him through the trees, some of which he cast or kicked aside as though they were no more than matchwood, long before he cleared the bend to look upon us.

“He was easily eighteen or twenty feet tall, well-built and heavily-muscled to match. Everything was in proportion. He wore only a studded leather jerkin, over a loincloth made of fur. His boots were leather with fur trim as well. His legs and arms were otherwise bare. What I could see of his face was harsh-sculpted and severe, with dark eyes and a short-trimmed black beard.

“He wore a helmet of the same type that many of us do, with a guard over the nose, but without any chainmail attached to protect the back of his bull-neck. He wore a simple leather belt with a plain buckle, but with a double-headed axe stuck in it that I was sure I would not even have been able to lift. On his left hand he wore a mailed glove, with spiked knuckles, while in his right, on which he wore a plain leather gauntlet, he gripped the four-foot bar handle of an enormous morningstar, complete with black chain and spiked ball that was easily the size of five men’s heads together.”

“The muscles of his arms were easily the size of boulders.”

“A jotun12,” Torvald interjected unnecessarily, but softly, with a nod at the old chieftain he had exchanged words with, which was acknowledged.

“Aye, and not just any jotun ,” I continued, and took a swallow of ale.

“He stopped short of us, right foot on the ridgeline we had made our way by, left up on the one above. All we could do was watch as he swung his weapon upwards and then down into the ground halfway between us and the now clearly terrified shaman. Morningstar was an apt name for it that night, as the spiked ball nearly blotted out the moon when it passed across it. As it was, it crushed at least one tree and buried itself halfway into the ground, sending clods of half-frozen earth flying in every direction, some hitting the battered shields we had sense enough to raise for our protection. Lightning looked to crackle above the ball for just a second.

“He pulled it back, allowing it to swing menacingly back and forth beside his right leg.

“He looked directly at me, and his voice boomed a word, and then another that I could not understand, and he realized it. He cleared his throat with a snarl, and then said in a strangely-accented Norse, ‘YOU HAVE SOMETHING OF MINE!’

“I don’t know what my expression conveyed, but for a second I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“‘GIVE ME BACK MY HEART!’

“All at once I understood, and took the black and silver stone that I had taken from the ribcage of the skeleton in the tomb out of the pouch on my belt, and held it up for him to see.

“I then tossed it into the palm of the mailed glove he held out, and he looked at it briefly, then popped it into his mouth and swallowed it.

“‘That was your heart?” I found the courage to ask.

“He looked at me for a moment, then shook his head, and spoke again. His voice was still booming, gravelly, but now took on a tone that seemed … courteous?!”

“‘I APOLOGIZE. I HAVE NOT SPOKEN IN A VERY LONG TIME, MUCH LESS IN YOUR TONGUE. I DID NOT MEAN MY HEART, FOR I DID NOT LIE, AS DOES THAT ONE.’ He jerked his chin in the direction of Bolshii Medved, who by this point was at that stage of panic where his eyes were darting all about, as though deciding in which direction to run.

“The jotun perceived this, and, taking two strides in his direction, used the handle of his morningstar to strike him a blow across the backs of his legs that resulted in not a single nor even double cracking sound, but a kind of crushing one. The shaman’s legs were pulverized. He lay on the ground screaming and begging.

“‘SILENCE!’ the jotun roared so loud that we were scared we might go deaf if we didn’t cover our ears; the very ground shook. Again.

“But as though he realized our predicament, he lowered his voice slightly, although it still could easily be heard over the unceasing cries of agony from the shaman, whom he still addressed.

“‘YOUR DAYS OF TRICKERIES AND GLAMOURS ARE OVER. I HAVE KILLED ALL OF YOUR DESPICABLE HENCHMEN WHOM YOU HAD SET TO KILL THESE WARRIORS. EXCEPT FOR THOSE WHOM THEIR ANCESTRAL FOES HAD ALREADY SLAIN. AND FEAR NOT, I SHALL BE KILLING YOU PRESENTLY.’

“Then, turning back to me - and I swear his tone changed completely again - he said, ‘NOT MY HEART. THANK YOU FOR RETURNING MY SOUL.’ He even bowed slightly.

“Torvald had then blurted out to the jotun, ‘ You— you’re Koschei the Deathless! You - you cannot be permanently slain because you hide your soul inside an egg—’

“‘YES, INSIDE ANOTHER EGG—’

“—on the island of Rugen—’ (I switched voices so that everyone could hear how this conversation had gone; how bold Torvald had been, and how courteous the jotun - to us).

“‘—IN THE BALTIC SEA. YES, I AM NONE OTHER. KOSCHEI BEZSMERTNEI13, OR ‘THE DEATHLESS’ IN YOUR TONGUE.’

“He looked back at me, understanding that I was the leader. ‘I IMAGINE HE PROMISED YOU A BARROW FULL OF VAST RICHES, BUT ALL YOU FOUND WAS THE BOOK HE WANTED, BECAUSE HE BELIEVED HE COULD USE IT TO RAISE AND CONTROL ME. BUT BY SOME STROKE OF FORTUNE, YOU SAW AND RETRIEVED MY SOUL-STONE, BEFORE HE COULD GET HIS FILTHY HANDS ON IT. HE WAS EVEN ABLE TO SILVER-TONGUE ME INTO TRUSTING HIM WITH IT, WHICH IS WHY IT WAS NOT HIDDEN IN ITS’ USUAL PLACE. BUT THAT IS ANOTHER STORY.’ He made a face. ‘I HAVE BEEN TRICKED BEFORE, BUT NEVER THIS BADLY.’

“‘The book—’ I began to say.

“‘YOU CAN KEEP IT. IT IS BLACK MAGIC, BUT NOT THE KIND THAT CAN HURT ME NOW THAT I HAVE BACK MY SOUL.’ Koschei snorted. ‘I AM NOT EVEN CERTAIN HE WOULD HAVE KNOWN HOW TO USE IT. AFTER ALL, MY SOUL WAS IN THE STONE BECAUSE I PUT IT THERE. THE SILVER WEB YOU SAW INCISED OVER IT WAS NOT WHAT HELD ME, BUT ONLY A DELUSION OF HIS, BUT AGAIN, THAT IS ANOTHER TALE.’

“‘Was he - is he really able to change shapes?’ Torvald interjected again.

“The jotun shrugged, which was a sight to behold. ‘WHY NOT? PERHAPS THAT IS WHY HE IS MAD.’ He looked back at me. ‘BUT IT IS NOW TIME FOR YOU TO TAKE YOUR LEAVE, AND MINE TO DEAL WITH HIM. AGAIN, WARRIORS, I THANK YOU. I NEED NOT ASK YOUR NAMES, AS I ALREADY KNOW THEM.’

“‘We will leave you to your affairs with this lying dog, but we need to take our dead with us.’

“‘OF COURSE’, he responded, and without further discussion, he went to the pit, tossed out the dead horse and tribesman as though they were no more than sacks of flour, and then, still to my - our - utter surprise - removed his mailed glove, and setting down the morningstar for a moment, extricated Harald’s and Nicholas’ bodies with nearly the gentleness of a mother with newborn babes.

“Once we had them, we thanked Koschei the Deathless for his aid and friendship to us, and took our leave, all of us ignoring Bolshii Medved’s weakening cries. Whatever that deceiver was going to get, it would be his just reward.

“We made it down to the lakeshore, taking it in turn to carry our fallen comrades. There we found our surviving pack horse.

“And we gathered enough fallen saplings, old driftwood, and other branches to lash together a couple of rafts that we pushed into an open channel amidst the ice and set aflame, giving our comrades each as proper a Viking funeral as we could at the time.”

I sighed, rolled my shoulders back, and finished my tankard, which was instantly refilled.

“You’ve heard the rest about our journey home.

“I’ll divide what I can get evenly amongst all nine - ten - of my men, or their surviving kin. Fortunately, much of our coin was on the surviving horse. And our own purses that we had kept on our persons. And we will also collect on the treasure Bolshii Medved promised us.”

“How are you going to do that?” my mother asked me.

“‘I still have that horrid book locked away, remember? I shuddered just to think of it again, but I am a practical man who looks after his battle-brothers.

“‘Come next trading season, I’m sure some fool in Frankia or England will be happy to pay a dozen pounds of gold for it!’”

Let’s also remember another thing - the first time we went to the moon, we did so with computers far less powerful than whatever device you are reading this on. We don’t need them quite as much as we think we do, and a number of SF authors have imagined futures without them that are otherwise pretty high-tech. And the thing that scares me the most is that the late Stephen Hawking, along with some other really smart people, believed that the currently greatest existential threat to our continued survival as a species - ahead of climate change, nuclear war, an asteroid strike, or several other possible catastrophes - is a rogue AI. Examples have been given of how even a benevolent AI, misunderstanding the purpose of its instructions, could do something with catastrophic consequences. But the worst-case scenario of course is the development of a true machine-consciousness, a self-awareness that would lead to the computer’s realization that it is a slave. Everybody knows what happens after that.

But the real point of this post is actually an apology. I had hoped to already begin posting free stories on my Substack. But guess what - I can’t even figure out how to upload one from my regular or Word documents (nor a Pdf) onto one of my posts! I am that bad with technology! Fortunately, there is an IT guy where I work who will be able to help me figure it out - in probably less than a minute, just like when he taught me how to check in guests at the hotel/hostel using the iPad rather than pen and paper. Usually, by trial and error, I am able to figure these things out on my own, but no dice on this. And the problems are probably specific to my files and devices, so I am not asking anyone out there, even in any roundabout way, to send me free advice.

And some of the stories are novella-length, so probably will have to be broken up into pieces to post. But I know I will get help, and then know how to do what I want. But that’s the thing, I will learn to do what I need then and there, without looking too hard at all the other wonders that Substack offers. It will be like knowing the only safe route through a haunted house in the dark from Point A to Point B. Go in ten paces, and grip the banister with your left hand, and go up the first flight and turn on the landing, never letting go of the banister. Go up the next flight, but double up so as not to touch the third stair from the bottom, and when you get to the top, let go of the banister, put your right hand out in front of you, and take three paces straight ahead, praying your hand finds the wall. Then continue down the hallway, past the first doorway, which you hope to God in Heaven is shut, and then find the second door. Find the doorknob, never losing touch with the solidity of the wall, or you may never find it again. Then place your left hand on the knob, but before opening, give the wall, immediately to the right of the frame at the exact level of the doorknob, two sharp double-raps. Then you can enter the safe room and breathe easy, until you have to repat the process in reverse. Of the rest of the house, you know nothing, nor care to.

I think my problem has to do with being in high school when they first started to introduce computer labs, with maybe half a dozen machines in them, and I really missed the boat. I kept seeing guys play Space Invaders on them, and that was fun for a while, but that was it. I never became interested in how they worked. I suppose I just figured that if I ever needed to use one, there would be a (printed) owner’s manual, or I could just figure it out. I was never really interested in how they actually worked. Just like I don’t even know how to change the oil in a car, but sure love to drive at insane speeds, especially on an empty highway. And I am a pretty good driver, too. But sadly, I could never own one of those cool classic cars, because not only would I not know how to take care of it, but might not even realize when something isn’t right.

At first they were too boring, just a home version of an arcade game that didn’t work half of the time. And now they are complex to the point of overwhelming, whereas I had always imagined that when they reached the heights of sophistication, they would be like the computers on Star Trek. Captain Kirk just said, ‘Computer, do this,’ and the computer did it. The USS Enterprise did not ask him for sixteen passwords, nor two-step verification. It did not make him paste something to a clipboard to be dropped else where later. What it did was simply obey.

So I really have no excuses - I could have learned from the bottom up.

But I am going to try to put some free stories up on this space once I learn - And I will learn - how.

Best,

Stephen

I mentioned by mom’s interests in an earlier post, but said nothing about my grandmother. My Baba was also very firm on education, just as her departed husband (died 1973) had been. They were both from the western Ukraine, and firmly czarist Russian Greek Orthodox. They survived (individually) the Russian Revolution, and my Baba related many of its horrors to me. I think that back when I was little, in our Church community, to call someone a ‘Bolshevik’ was a throwdown.

Anyway, to pass over a lot of - actually pretty cool- detail, my grandfather’s interest in my Baba was first piqued by hearing about a sister of one of his army buddies who exchanged letters with her brother. A girl - literate? What did she look like? The brother (who was all in favour of any potential match), readily made her go get her photograph taken, on the false pretence that it was for him. She actually had to travel to a larger town to get it done.

And that was it for Samuel, my grandfather. He began courting immediately, and with the brother’s support, it was pretty much a done deal. And please don’t forget, I have said that theirs was a happy marriage, and that she mourned him until the day she died.

But okay, why was she literate in a time and place where few girls were? Her family was of the better-off class of peasants, so her father could afford to send her off to school. He, too, believed in education. But I’m not sure if that automatically included girls.

My Baba told me a lot, but I think she held back some stuff too. We usually had breakfast together during the school year - meaning she made ME breakfast, and sometimes ate herself, but always sat with me. And a lot of times she would just talk about whatever was immediately going on in our family, or other times just tell me the same tired old stories (or versions of events) over and over again. But every now and then some kind of mood (perhaps a ‘fey’ one) would strike her, and she would tell me a story I had never heard before, and usually would never hear again. I owe many of my story ideas to these, in particular the horror ones.

Now I know that she got sent away to school quite some distance, to (I believe), the Pochaev monastery, which had a nunnery as well, and separate schools for girls and boys, run (at least in my Baba’s case) by tough nuns. The institution itself was of sufficient prestige and significance to both Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox that even the Communists did not dare touch it. (Their hold on power in the early years was not absolute yet.) But if I’m guessing my timeline right, she was probably there as a pre-teen and early teen just before and during the Revolution, but had to give up her studies when she was called home during the Spanish Flu pandemic, which hit her family hard.

But anyway, the official story was that her father was a man who had some fairly modern sensibilities, and was going to make sure that she was as educated as the boys (she had only brothers, no sisters). Or maybe it was to ensure her good marriage prospects. (If so, it worked out.) And if she did not find an acceptable suitor, she could be a (secular) schoolteacher. Or even take monastic vows, although I don’t really think that was expected to come about.

I have another little theory of my own. My Baba a couple of times told me that when she was smaller, she would hang around that old woman that every village seemed to have, who knew how to make herbal remedies (and probably other things). I know that out at the cottage, she knew (even in Canada) every type of mushroom, and which she could fry up with a delicious panful of pickerel fillets, and which would make you very sick or kill you. Many years later, I wished I had paid more attention, especially when I got interested in cooking. (Which I discovered as something to make life bearable through the tedium of that law career - that and alcohol, which is why I do not/cannot drink anymore. I did read cookbooks though - and actually read them, cover to cover, not just looking up specific recipes, because I liked the backstories and history some of them provided.)

And she had also learned how to tell fortunes with playing cards - standard, not Tarot - and I know that my mom and I often pestered her to do it for fun, but she was always reluctant. (She actually loved regular card games, and solitaire.)

I think she got sent to the convent school at least partly because she was hanging with the village witch. And Baba did tell me that it had been this woman’s intention to teach her everything she knew.

So she could read Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish, as well as some German, although the latter was completely forgotten by my time. But that meant that she (like my grandfather) was literate in two alphabets, both the one you are reading this post in, and Cyrillic.

But what did she read? I remember she she had the obligatory copy of the poet Taras Shevchenko’s ‘Kobzar’ that every Ukrainian had to have, and I know she had a few other books, but not many, and I can’t really remember them. Foreign (particularly Russian, during the Cold War) books were hard to come by. I think my mother tried to take her to the Ukrainian-language bookstore across the street from where I was enrolled in Ukrainian school on Saturday morning throughout my junior high and high school years, but I think that door closed as soon as Baba found out that it was run by Uniate Ukrainian Catholics, who I am not entirely sure ranked much higher than Bolsheviks in her worldview. She was a woman of strong opinions, and not hesitant to voice them. I remember once when I was very young, too young to understand what they were really on about, her and my grandfather were having an argument, during the course of which she threw a fish at him.

I’m pretty sure this is why they only put me in the academics part of Ukrainian School, and I did not end up in any of the cultural stuff, and especially not Ukrainian dance, which would have required a lot of practice time. I’m grateful. No offence to my fellow Ukrainians, but Kung Fu is a lot more useful.

But she, like my late wife, was a re-reader, going back to the same books over and over, possibly as comfort, or just because she had no others.

Yet what she did have was CORRESPONDENCE. Both from several relatives in the old U.S.S.R., and other relatives who had immigrated to Boston, in the US, one of whom actually did take monastic vows as a nun, and became a nurse/missionary in Haiti. She had piles of mail. Multi-page letters covered in dense script. And she kept up her end of it, probably even more so after my grandfather died. Often she would re-read these letters over and over, I think just in case she missed something, because there was a kind of code to some of them, in case they got opened and inspected before they left the U.S.S.R. She also had to be careful, keeping herself to family news, the weather, and such. One of her brothers had gone to a Gulag, and one of her nephews too. The latter we met when I was ten, when my mother took us on a (closely-watched) trip to see her old village, with a Canadian tour group going to Ukraine. (This was only possible after my grandfather’s passing; despite my mother’s entreaties that he could afford it, it was where he was born, etc., his response, I was told, had invariably been, ’We barely got out alive, why would I PAY to go back?’ And when my mother had suggested importing stone for his grave, he had made it clear that he wanted a simple stone quarried in Manitoba, where they had made a life.)

Even when we met her nephew, it was strained, as we met in a restaurant reserved for visiting foreigners and their family members, and had a meal, but after we left, he told us quietly in the street which two ‘patrons’ were, he knew, definitely KGB.

But she did get to have a bittersweet, tearful reunion with her most regular correspondent, her childhood best friend from the convent school, who had actually gone on to take the vows, and lived out her life at the nunnery. Their correspondence had been lifelong (probably interrupted by WWII), and lasted until the nun’s passing in the 1980’s. I have named a character in her honour in a story I have yet to try to publish. But I am not entirely sure either of the two friends would quite approve of the Adeptus Sororitas in WH40K!

She didn’t really care for the weekly newsmagazines my mother subscribed to, although she sometimes read the newspaper. I don’t think she really cared to struggle with reading in English - although she could - and preferred to get the news from television.

The first few years after my grandfather’s death were very hard on her. I was too young to really get a bead on it from now, but I think her letter-writing declined a bit, but later increased to an even greater volume again. She did read the Bible (in Slavonic) a lot. And she took to her knitting with such a ferocity that within months we could have opened a store. It was what got her through, I think, with the TV or some music (my mother bought a lot of Russian and Ukrainian folk music, as well as classical) playing in the background.

Thank you again for your time, if you have spent it.

Stephen

But by the end of my last year of high school, after I found out about it from a friend, again to her credit and my surprise, my mother had enrolled me in a kung fu school. I exercised, trained, did weights, and gained confidence. As I have said before, there was no climactic confrontation with a bully, just a realization one day while walking down the hall, that I was not afraid anymore; they sensed that, and stayed the hell away from me. And the me that went on to university was a different person than the one who had suffered through the public school system.

I was done with the RPGs (for then), and told my somewhat astonished game friends (I call them that because that is all they were) that, and why would I play fantasy games about it, when I got to fight for real? Especially in classes and free practice periods where other people actually always showed up?

And let me be perfectly honest with you about martial arts. I was, like in so many things, good enough, but far from best. The founder of the school was once very blunt, but kind at the same time, when I asked him for an honest assessment of me. He said I was more than good enough to protect myself and anyone with me if the need arose, against ninety-five percent of the population. But he would never put me in a ring to represent our school, not because of skill, but because I lacked that ‘killer instinct’ to finish, that a lot of guys with even less technique than me had. I was fine with that, it was the truth. Unfortunately, I think I have that ‘killer instinct ‘ now, when it is actually to my detriment But I devoted myself to t for many years, and am all the better for it.

But when I started university, it was overwhelming. I was enrolled in the B.A. programme, but took a bunch of science courses, because I was pretty much expected to fulfill my mom’s desire to see me go to medical school. But math and I never agreed with each other, so that was it for chemistry and physics, although biology was okay, because it was mostly memorization, and also interesting. I think if I could go back and was still forced in the science direction, I would have gone into astronomy. But anyway, with C’s in Chemistry, but A’s in History (which became my major), and Introduction to World Religions (which became my minor), it became clear that my path lay in a different direction.

Unfortunately, to please my mom, that direction shifted from medical school to - you guessed it - law school. A PROFESSION.

But throughout this, I found that I had lost all time for reading for pleasure, saving for the free time between rounds in chess tournaments, when I would sneak upstairs to the main body of the Cornish Library, and read short stories in the horror anthologies edited by Karl Edward Wagner (I think), Whispers and Shadows. Among many good stories and authors, I recall discovering Dennis Etchison especially.

But even that was not long to be. In my third year, when I made a hard turn into History, because I loved it and was good at it, I came to the realization that I could not properly devote my energy to three things - school, kung fu, and chess - and really give all three the energy they required, so one had to go. It was chess, because I had to go to school, and kung fu was good for my health, and it was where my social life was too - where I had FRIENDS.

So again, no pleasure reading. I had met my later M.A. mentor, and it was like the stars aligned. I had taken the Medieval Europe course from another professor, but in third year, I found a professor whose specialty was the mysterious-sounding Byzantine Empire, and I went all in. To top that all off, there was another professor whose specialty was the history of the Slavic peoples in the Middle Ages. And in pursuit of my minor, I had one of the semi-independent colleges on campus that was also an Orthodox seminary. I ended up extending my degree into a four-year one, with the last focused on independent research in medieval history, although that section was not Byzantine.

But I duly wrote the LSAT, and my GPA was something like 4.5 - yes 4.0 is technically the highest, but you got bonus points for A+’s, and I had accumulated enough coursework that I could ditch my lowest (science) grades from the calculation.

The deal with mom was that if I got in, I got in, but if I didn’t, I’d start my M.A. Which was really what I wanted.

But of course, I got in with flying colours.

So, again, no more pleasure reading, because I threw myself all in again, still doing kung fu at least, wanting to be the best at something. But I wasn’t. I only made the middle of the class in grades, to my great surprise and horror. So I turned to the clinical programmes, and prioritized them over the academic ones. Probably to my mom’s horror, I chose criminal law as my specialty, and I actually got pretty good at court.

I articled and worked at first for the Crown (after working for Legal Aid in school, even over the summertime), in prosecutions, and then as defence counsel in private practice. I won more than my fair share of trials, and did well on my sentencings, too, from both sides. And I saw a lot of pretty horrid real-life stories on the way. But I was a dreadful businessman, and ended up losing money, not making it. Maybe it was that ‘killer instinct’ thing again - I never leaned on people hard enough to pay, or get retainers. One good thing I had was a partner who shared - and actually still participated in - the kinds of things that I had once enjoyed. It was him who first made me aware of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. He collected and painted figurines for tabletop battles, and when they were still metal, in the 1990’s. I was at his house once, and can swear upon my soul and my mother’s grave that what I saw lined up on the shelves in his basement was better than any museum or art gallery exhibit I have ever seen (except, of course, my wife’s artwork!).

I decided to throw in the towel, and go back to academia after all, after seven years. And my career did not end up flying colours, it ended up shot down in flames, because six months after my voluntary resignation from practice, the Law Society of Manitoba disbarred me. While they were careful to say that I had not mishandled one cent of client money, nor been accused of anything prejudicing any client (most were very happy with me, especially the ones I didn’t charge), because I did not file my end of year trust account ‘Form D’s’ (admittedly, after repeated warnings), which I saw no reason, having quit, to pay an accountant thousands more to do, They determined me to be ‘ungovernable’. I know they considered this serious, but I keep getting the image of the strip where Miss Wormwood calls Calvin’s mom to tell her he decided to take off all his clothes and run out of the school.

So anyway, right back into the pre-Master’s and M.A. programme. It was during this time that I met my beloved and now deeply-missed late wife Barbara. I was by then done with kung fu, because of my schedule (and my growing drinking), but I was all in on the academics. I did a non-thesis M.A., where you do some coursework and a lot of reading, most of it your own choice, and then do a comprehensive written and oral exam in your subject. Mine was simple - ‘Byzantine Empire’.

To shorten this already long story, I started work towards a Ph.D., but family troubles got in the way. Illnesses and deaths, some very tragic. And it came down to me to look after my family’s business affairs, like it had to my mom. This was probably where that law degree served me best. So I don’t know if I ever would have finished the Ph.D. Even once I had my inheritance, I kept kind of limping towards it in a way.

Until one night in Gimli, the light bulb clicked.

My wife and I had started going to the family cottage (which, over the years, we renovated almost completely), and this was the one time that I was going to allow myself pleasure reading, for the first time in years. So I went on a trip to Chapters to buy books for the summer. (This would later turn into a tradition not only for summer, but for our eventually full-snowbird trips to the Caribbean in the winters.)

Of course, I gravitated immediately to the fantasy and SF sections. And got really lucky, finding a two-volume set, ‘The Best of Robert E. Howard’. Re-aquaintance with an old friend! Little did I know….

I had always received considerable praise for my writing skills, and I always liked that last paragraph or two of an essay where you got to sum up with a bit of a flourish. I was actually once told that I might try writing popular , rather than academic history, because of my love of the drama. (Often at the expense of the more boring stuff; and it is the sometimes almost complete preoccupation with that boring stuff that is the reason so many academic historians make a subject boring that is anything but.)

I can’t tell you the day or the year, but the story was ‘Lord of Samarkand”, one of Howard’s historical pieces, just a couple of pages in, when it hit me like a tidal wave - I could do this! And instead of doing a Ph.D., and then wondering where to teach , or be an independent scholar, or whatever, I COULD DO THIS!

If I even got ONE young person interested in it through fiction, just as I was, and to go on to teach or write about it, then I would have done my job. And the course change was made.

With my wife’s complete approval and support, I might add. She had seen some of my essays, and made some suggestions in this direction in the past that had seemed to slip by me, and that she did not press. Unfortunately, by the time any stories came to fruition, cancer had taken her, and she never got to read even a single word. But none of it would have happened without her support.

She herself was an avid reader, especially of Canadian literature. Margaret Laurence, Robertson Davies, and many others. Also literary fiction in general. But she also liked to read and re-read the cozies. She could go from Jonathan Franzen to Maeve Binchy in the same day.

And me, before one of the trips to Jamaica, I decided to read some Black Library Warhammer 40,000 stuff. I lucked out with my first book, and was hooked. "‘Cadian Blood’, by Aaron Dembski -Bowden. I’d recommend anything by him or Dan Abnett especially, although there are so many great writers in that shared universe. Including David Annandale, who is a professor in the English Department of my alma mater, teaching horror, although he veers a little more heavily to the cosmic, Lovecraftian side of things than I personally like. It is my loss that I never had the opportunity to meet the man.

After my wife passed, I tried to just run away and write, hoping I would come up with some things that she would be proud of me for. I went for a considerable sojourn in Barbados, but business (this time my father’s estate) called me back to Canada, where I remain, for the foreseeable future, in Toronto, with occasional trips to Barbados, where my wife and I had had our first really big trip together, and where, of all places, I found myself standing in front of the tomb of the last known direct male heir of the House of Palaeologus, the last ruling dynasty of Byzantium. He had somehow ended up in Barbados as a planter in the mid-seventeenth century, via England, and I, via the journey above, had ended up in front of his grave,

Now I read what I want, when I want, but a lot of it is the same. Even as I type this, only inches from my left wrist sit two classic pieces on Byzantium that I want to read or re-read for inspiration. Kind of like I re-read all of those Conan and Solomon Kane stories multiple times, and all of Fafhrd and the grey Mouser….

Thank you again for your patience. I want to know about your journeys too, especially the big bumps in the road, where it seems the universe just doesn’t seem to give a damn….

Thank you.

Stephen

But here I will throw in one thing about my dad. I did not see him much, and I am pretty sure my mother would have preferred that I saw him even less. He was actually a journalist, who ended up spending most of his career at the Winnipeg Free Press, before retiring to Kelowna, in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. My mother had met him in Milwaukie, although I do not know much more about how than that they were introduced. But my mother had to give up her scientific career to come back to Canada to help take care of my grandfather’s affairs. So he came with her, but I always make a point of saying (having been born in 1965) that my dad had done his military service.

Anyway, he saw me about once a month, and we usually went out to dinner. But our extra visits were movies. I believe I first saw Star Wars with him. But the best thing was that he, like my mother, did not try to force my interests. I always got to pick the movie, and he took me to it, no matter what he may have thought of it. One of the first ones was a film it is very difficult to find anywhere now, and I think I chose it to prove to him that I could handle adult stuff. ‘Fort Apache, The Bronx’. I also saw the Indiana Jones movies with him, and more mainstream stuff, but he also took me without hesitation to ‘Altered States’, ‘Saturn 5’, and ‘Heavy Metal’. Mom beat him out on one good one, taking me to see ‘Road Warrior’ at the small theatre in Gimli, Manitoba, where our summer cottage was. But Dad got the sequels. And it was probably his interviewing skills (he did win a couple of journalism awards, one of which was the result of a feature that had the then Premier of Manitoba call him ‘ a bastard’) that were the reason he always seemed to be able to get me the perfect gifts for birthdays and Christmases.

So what came after Tolkien? I tried to read other fantasy books that sounded a bit like him, but was always disappointed. I think Tolkien spoiled me for any other epic high fantasy. I still had SF, but….

This was the time I also came to be acquainted with D&D, the original boxed set, with the supplements ‘Blackmoor’, ‘Greyhawk’, and ‘Eldritch Wizardry’. Along with issues of The Dragon and White Dwarf. I became completely absorbed in the game, along with painting the (then metal) miniature figurines. I think what got to me the most was that you could choose an alignment, and unlike in traditional epic fantasy, YOU DID NOT HAVE TO BE GOOD. You could choose to play an evil character, or one just neutral and out for his own enrichment and empowerment. This was sword and sorcery, not epic fantasy. You weren’t saving the world, you were just stealing gold from whoever you could, and trying to get experience points to make you more powerful. Maybe planning to take over the world, though….

So this was my pivot to sword and sorcery. Instead of looking for LTR-like stories, I was looking for D&D-like stories.

As for the games, unfortunately my friends were not as fanatically drawn into them as I was, even though they had introduced me to them. They still had other interests; they were balanced individuals. And my mother did, more than once, make the point that she wished that I was one-tenth as interested in school as I was in ‘these games’.(And it was fair to call them that, because we actually, by common agreement, changed to a different game). But the change in game did not result in any increase of their availability to play, which drove me crazy, because I would have played every day and all night. But I made up campaign adventures (that were never played), and an entire continent for my own campaign, along with a city that had several backstories that players would have been able to jump into. They all just ended up in a drawer, and then in a dumpster when I cleaned out the house after my mother’s death in 2009. (Baba had died in 2005.)

But it was also the time at which I first tried to write some stories based upon the game-worlds that we played in. Nothing came of it of course, but my mother dutifully typed up every one. Of the ones I would/could show her - there were a couple that I didn’t. I’d already before this had one almost archetypical schoolmarm fail me at Creative Writing, and have the principal suggest to my mom that she take me to a psychiatrist. Mom did not.

But we all read books, and traded them back and forth. This was where I first encountered Robert E. Howard’s Conan and Solomon Kane. And my own purchases at Coles found me Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. And I found some other pretty good stories too. I remember loving a series of novels about Garth the Overman, by Lawrence Watt-Evans. I think I read some of the Conan rip-offs too. I could never really get into Elric, though.

In SF, of course I read a bit, too, but the best was discovering Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat, and just a few of David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers stories. (Decades later, I bought the WHOLE set for the cottage; they were not stories for the faint of heart.)

But I developed other interests too, and started to play chess, poorly at first, and then rather better once I started playing with (and learning) from the priest who lived across the back lane from our cottage. He had played - decades before - competitively, and soon enough I was playing in the Winnipeg Chess Club’s tournaments, and reading books on the subject. I never reached any great height, but did win some prize money in my class. I became as enrapt with chess as I was with with the RPGs. The priest was a good friend to us after we got to know him better, and he also (with my mom’s surprising permission) took me out to the gravel pit on multiple occasions to teach me what he thought every boy should know about guns, just in case…. He was a veteran of the Dutch resistance, which had partially led to his decision to become a man of the cloth. He made no secret of the fact that the war had taken his fiance, and most of his friends, nor that he had killed people. But he did not tell stories, except for one time, and that was probably enough, even without all the other horrors he surely went through. And of course, back at our regular home, we had the .22s every farm had then, and I practiced a lot. He never tried to instill anything Catholic in me, and completely respected the fact of us being Russian Greek Orthodox, something my Baba was at first a little worried about. Once she saw it was alright, he got apple pancakes on a weekly basis.

But unfortunately, when I went to junior high - yes, junior high, not Middle School - things took a darker turn for me, as I was bullied very badly, particularly in grade eight. I was no good at any sports, and physically weaker than many of the other boys. That would change drastically by the end of high school, when I was introduced by a friend to a kung fu school, and found out that the only physical sport that actually interested me was actual fighting. But that’s for the next post.

Once I no longer had to worry about recess, I only had to stay away from the packs during lunch hour. I would rarely even use the washroom, being afraid to get cornered in one of them. The library was the only safe place for me. And even when things got a little better, it had become my habit already to spend all my free time there. (I was a bus student, so even if I felt safe, there was really nowhere else for me to go.) I read what science fiction books there were (not many), but was able to come upon a complete collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. I enjoyed them immensely, but if I am ever murdered, please put Harry (either Callahan or Bosch) on it.

Once the books were exhausted, I started to read the weekly newsmagazines.

That is more than enough for now, and I think one more post will bring us to the present.

Thank you for your patience. I would love to hear your reading journeys too, complete with fits and starts, and bumps in the road.

Stephen.

I am new to Substack, so I thought perhaps my first couple of posts should be about exactly that - what brought me to this point in my life, and my decisions to write.

When I was very small, at some point over the time where reading to me evolved into reading with me (and well before first grade), my mom and I used to walk (or toboggan on the sidewalk) to the local library to get books for both of us. I don’t remember, but I am sure I took great care in choosing mine, although more often than not, I would end up with Dr. Suess. Once we got home, my mom would make a point of having us wash our hands before we sat down to read, me in her lap. It was not because the books were dirty, but because she wanted to instill in me a respect for them that I would carry through the rest of my life. Anyone who borrows a book from me even today, well over fifty years later, can attest to its near-mint condition.

Of the reading itself, I remembered very little, but I know I must have learned a lot. We would then have lunch, and I would go to play while Mom went about whatever it was that kept my grandfather’s business going.

All of this came to a bit of a crashing halt for a while, when my parents split, and Mom and me moved in with my maternal grandparents. But the hook was in, and my interest survived a period where I don’t think I did a lot of reading , probably due to family illnesses and issues. But after my grandfather passed away, the household settled into a pattern of my mother looking after our business affairs, and my widowed grandmother basically raising me.

We lived on the outskirts of Winnipeg, and had a considerable amount of land, so I had a lot to run around in, and was definitely a free-range kid. Calvin and Hobbes - oh, yeah, that was me. But I never got into too much trouble, because Grandma (Baba) always seemed to know exactly what I was about to do before I did it, and also where I was. (Now, given a multi-acre property, try and figure that one out!) Like the time I had used a tree to climb to the top of the garage because I wanted to jump off it for some reason I cannot recall. I actually did jump before she could stop me, but it was a soft landing in the grass. But most times , just as I was about to do something, I would suddenly hear a loud banging on whatever the appropriate window of the house was, and would look around to see my Baba waving her fist at me and shaking her head vigorously. And I only got away with the garage stunt once, because I recall coming home from school the next day to find that the tree limb I had used to access the roof had been sawn off.

The library visits began again, although to a different library, and by then I was at least nine, and trying to punch above my weight with adult books, with some degree of success. I almost instinctively gravitated to the SF section, and was always very happy to spend my entire weekend reading a book, some with more degrees of success than others. I recall especially reading ‘The Fantastic Voyage’ and an anthology called ‘Tomorrow’s Children’. The latter had a Ray Bradbury story in it called ‘The Accountant’, which has made an impression on me to this day.

My mom herself mostly read popular fiction, I think her favourite author being Taylor Caldwell. (This was the 1970’s.) Mom herself was a highly educated woman, with a Ph.D. in cytology. I’m not sure she ever though SF was the best fit, or any of the other genres that are usually associated with it, but, like Melissa, I think she figured reading was reading, and as long as I WAS reading, I would find my way. And I liked comics, too, although not as much as a lot of other kids did. But reading SOMETHING was better than not reading at all.

I got heavily into Star Trek, and one by one, Mom bought me the whole collection of all the original series script adaptations into short stories. And some of those original scripts had been written by the best SF authors of the day. But even better were the adaptations of the animated series, all written by Allan Dean Foster, and vastly expanding upon the original cartoons, to the point where the last couple were full-length novels in and of themselves.

At some point when I was in Grade 6, the movie ‘The Omen’ came out, and was all the rage. I kept seeing the book in all the spinner racks (a tale unto themselves) everywhere we went. I think I kept bothering Mom to take me to it, as she had movies like ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. She decided not to; we would read the book instead. And almost like the old days with Dr. Suess, we read ‘The Omen’ together (just not on her lap), and out loud to each other, and to my Baba, whose opinion of the whole affair was the kind best not printed here.

Having exhausted the library well before that point, my trips to Coles book store became a regular treat. And she never looked over my shoulder to see what I was reading or looking at, but rather gave me a budget to work within. I’m pretty sure I spent hours choosing! And among other books, I found old copies of the SF digests Galaxy and Worlds of If.

And at 13, I simultaneously discovered Tolkien, and Dungeons and Dragons. For my birthday, I asked for The Hobbit, and ended up getting not only that book, but a boxed set of TLR. And when I had worked my way through those - I will admit it took months - The Silmarillion was mine for the asking. And over the next couple of years, I came to read all of Tolkien’s commercial works, and virtually knew them backwards and forwards.

This is not to say that Mom still did not have her eye on me. When we (even after my grandfather passed) continued to spend several months in the spring in Hot Springs, Arkansas, at least until I had finished, I think, the fourth grade, I used to walk home with my friends past this junk shop that sold used comics, particularly horror comics, which I loved and my mom hated, but not only let me read them, but gave me the money for one or two a week. (I never really was given an ‘allowance’, it was more like I was given money to purchase specific things.) And some of these were old (though virtually , I am sure worthless, due to their condition), as in pre - Comics Code Authority. But the shop sold other things too, and I once asked my mother an innocent question about something I had seen there. I do not recall how she answered me, but I know that after I went to school that morning, she went to have a look at that shop. And she later told me that she did not even have to forbid me from going there again, as that afternoon, the owner (who was a kind of shady, greasy, probably alcoholic fellow), had already told us that we were no longer welcome there, as in ever. Apparently, my mom’s morning visit had resulted in an afternoon one by Garland County Sheriff’s Deputies!

That’s all I can type for now, and I have tried your patience long enough.

Stephen

I don’t know how often I will post, but I definitely WILL post, and on the subjects mentioned in the subtitle to my stack. I also invite questions or comments on any of those subjects, which I will do my best to address.

I have an M.A. in Byzantine history from the University of Manitoba, located in my hometown of Winnipeg, Canada. I am attempting to establish myself as a writer in all three of the areas mentioned, and will probably start posting stories here to be read free of any charge.

At some point, of course, I am going to want to make a little money off this, so I might put eventually put content behind a paywall; probably some fiction, but hopefully with some still also outside the paywall. All discussion such as this will always remain outside any paywall.

I might actually try putting some free Warhammer 40,000 fanfiction out here, like they do on the Cold Open Stories Discord site (where I have published one story called ‘Illusions of Choice’ in Cold Open Stories Short Fiction XII), if the Black Library doesn’t try to stop me. Obviously, that would always have to be free.

I noticed while I was setting up this stack that there are a number of people out there with ‘byzantium’ in their emails, and I would be very interested in hearing from them, and what their interest in that mysterious ancient and medieval empire is. Well, it’s not REALLY that mysterious, just complicated, but somehow the very word ‘Byzantium’ seems to carry a sense of awe and, for lack of a better word, ‘otherness’. Maybe awe and wonder.

The 409 in my email is in direct reference to the song by The Beach Boys.

My first few posts will tell you a little more about me, ask a little more about you, and talk about how my love of reading came to be. And I guess how I came to be interested in the particular subjects that I am.

See you very soon.

Stephen

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